06 · Illustration & key art
2026 · WordPress VIP
An illustration system for WordPress VIP, and a tool to scale it.
The line-art illustration and key-art language behind WordPress VIP, built as a system that compounds across the brand, plus the Key Art Creator: a tool that turns a photo or an icon into on-brand key art in minutes.
Why
Blog featured imagery, or key art more broadly, can look like a low-impact place to invest. We produce an average of three blog images a week, and each one is often an intentionally lightweight ask, given the volume of visuals we have already built and the ROI any single post image may generate on its own. But in practice this work expands to far more touchpoints than the blog.
Key art is usually the seed of a visual system that reaches well past the post it was made for. The image built for one article often becomes an ad, an email, a Customer Hub graphic, a slide, an organic social post, a frame in a customer or prospect presentation. Even when a single post never becomes a traffic driver, the visual made for it keeps creating value across other surfaces. So the real work is not only supporting editorial production: it is growing a visual library that compounds over time, and that helps both Brand Squad and Marketing move faster, with less repeated effort and stronger consistency across channels.
The system
The language is built on line. Following VIP’s brand system, shapes and photographs are rendered as fields of line-strokes: the power of line, optical pattern, and simple metaphors, held to a disciplined two or three shades of color inside the VIP ecosystem. Everything sits on the standard key-art frame, 1440 x 810, on a guiding grid with a safe zone that keeps critical content clear of the margins and gives every image the same sense of structure. Alongside it sits a growing set of marketing icons and spot illustrations. Because each new piece is made from the same building blocks, the library compounds: readily available, consistent across channels, and faster to build on each time.
The Key Art Creator
To make this process more efficient and scalable, I started building a key art generator: the Key Art Creator. The goal is to open this kind of production up beyond illustrators alone, so more of the team can make on-brand imagery quickly and consistently. The tool turns a photo or a built-in icon into distinctive line-art key art, built entirely around VIP’s brand system, on the standard 1440 x 810 frame.
What it does
The tool renders any shape or photo as a field of line-strokes on our standard key-art frame, with several visual directions to choose from.
- Mark & stroke. Mark styles of dashes, repeated outlines that grow out from the shape, typographic letters, or 0/1 binary code; strokes that follow the form of the image, hold a uniform angle, or cross-hatch.
- Branded building blocks. A library of ready-made VIP shapes and icons (globe, key, infinity loop, cursor, chair, and more), plus characters built from our Aktiv Grotesk typeface.
- Composition & layout. Add several shapes to one frame and arrange them freely; move, resize, rotate, and flip each element on the canvas; snap to center and to the brand layout grid while dragging, with an optional grid overlay; pre-defined structures like split layouts and front or behind layering.
- Photo & color. Pull in imagery from our photo library as a fully adjustable layer or a full-frame background; apply VIP system colors to line and background, with transparency and custom values; tonal controls to tune how a photo reads as line-art.
- Motion & export. Animate the art (angle sweep, wave, flowing march, pulsing line weight, or scrambling code); export as vector SVG, WebP, or an MP4 of the animation; copy straight to Figma via our Frame Builder plugin; undo and redo, plus a short in-tool guide, so it stays approachable for non-illustrators.
What it changes
What used to be a relatively time-consuming task can now be done in a few minutes. By building on visual systems and assets we had already developed, the tool makes key art creation much more efficient while opening the process up to more people across the organization. It turns repetitive one-off production into a scalable, repeatable design system, while still leaving room for creative direction and customization when a piece needs it.
Looking ahead, this is an area I want to keep systematizing in close partnership with the Content team: treating blog imagery not as isolated one-off requests, but as a reusable system that supports speed, consistency, and stronger storytelling across the business.