DeepL 2025 Wrapped - Storyboard & Illustration

At the end of 2025, DeepL needed a video to recap a landmark year: new products, milestones, awards, and ecosystem launches. The content requirements came from stakeholders across the company. The job was to make a long list of achievements feel like one story.

DeepL wrapped video

My role

Storyboard structure and central illustration. Worked with a copywriter on the script and the motion designer on execution.

Team

Motion designer: Ronald Mau Copywriter: Laith Zayadine Art Director: Wolf Strack

A year of separate wins, told as one thing

The script covered DeepL Agent, Marketplace, Academy, Bridges, AI Labs, security certifications, language expansion, and industry awards. Each one mattered to a different team, and each team wanted its own moment. Presented as a list, it would have read as a list.

Readable close up and zoomed out

The hardest constraint was dual legibility. Each section had to be instantly clear as a standalone frame, held on screen for a few seconds, while also making sense as one component of a much larger composition that would only be revealed at the end. A layout that worked at full zoom could easily fall apart when the camera pulled back, and the reverse was just as true.

In the first part of the animation, the motherboard is dark blue

Close details of each component

The central concept came out of collaboration with the motion designer: a motherboard, where each chip and section represents a different DeepL achievement.

Translating achievements into microchips

The central concept came out of collaboration with the motion designer: a motherboard, where each chip and section represents a different DeepL achievement. The camera navigates the board section by section, then pulls back at the end to reveal the whole thing. The metaphor does the argument for you. Every product and initiative is a component of one larger system.

We spent a few hours brainstorming how each area should be represented. Security certifications became stacked compliance chips. Language expansion became a keyboard. DeepL Agent got its own central processor with distinct visual weight to mark it as the year's flagship.

The illustration was built within DeepL's isometric design system in Figma, working with established components while extending the palette into darker, more technical territory to suit the subject.

Outcome and impact

The final storyboard runs 35 frames, structured around the script, with the motherboard appearing across multiple scenes at different zoom levels and angles. The video was published in December 2025 as DeepL's year in review.