DeepL Bridges - Community Brand System

DeepL Bridges is the company's global community platform. It needed a branding system that could express community, collaboration, and shared values around DeepL's products.

My role

Brand system designer, Illustrator

Team

Illustrator: Carolina Alárcon Community manager: Tim Cadenbach Art Director: Wolf Strack, Ana Rodrigues

Link to the project ↗

Link to the project ↗

Link to the project ↗

The project

Extend DeepL's isometric illustration language (built by Pentagram) into a system for the DeepL community, Bridges. Make it modular and scalable across website, social, and LinkedIn. Core challenge: communicate community and culture for a global audience without cultural bias or clichés. DeepL Bridges was the winning concept, among other option that could represent the community, like Hive (below there are some early ideas).

The image showcases a digital illustration featuring futuristic buildings, wind turbines, and floating cubes on a purple background with the text "Hivee The Deep's community," alongside a smaller inset with two profile images and geometric icons.
The image features an abstract illustration of a futuristic, elevated pathway resembling bridges, connecting platforms with geometric shapes and wind turbines, set against a minimalist, cloud-dotted background in shades of blue and purple.

The solution

The concept is bridges, structures that connect separate points, mirroring a platform built on language and connection. Illustrations use interconnected pillars, green for community and dark blue for development, always linked. Abstraction replaces literal symbols: culture is an L-shaped couch and coffee table, not a flag; meet and greet is an espresso machine with two cups, not people waving. Built in Figma as modular components (cubes, pillars, platforms, bridges) so new assets scale without breaking the system, with non-realistic proportions that keep focus on relationships over objects.


The system now supports the Bridges website, social channels, and LinkedIn, with guidelines and templates that let distributed teams across EU, US, and APAC produce on-brand work autonomously. DeepL Bridges has grown to over 1,500 members.