Notion’s new brand campaign reimagines the app’s minimal look into a primary-coloured playground

Notion is the all-in-one digital workspace that is known for its no-fuss, all-business, functional layouts. The productivity tool’s simple design identity is made to be adaptable to all kinds of users and work tasks (and to simplify all that life admin we’re not keeping on top of). Though, according to head of creative at Notion, Rob Giampietro, the brand’s humble utilitarian look doesn’t always work in its favour: “Our more minimalistic look, inspired by our software, was getting lost in applications like global OOH,” he says. The campaign for the launch of Notion’s new AI-enabled updates this summer was therefore used as a way to refresh its appearance and “talk about our values rather than more tech hype”, as Rob puts it. In time for the arrival of its new features, Notion brought creative agency Buck onboard to help bring to life a new brand campaign.

“Although we had a beloved brand and passionate community already, we felt we were missing a clear call-to-action that made Notion simple and easy for everyone to understand,” Rob says. Working with the team at Buck, they took a fresh spin on Notion’s usual focus on everything the note-taking app can do — concentrating instead on how using Notion “can make you feel”. With playful primary-coloured illustrations that aim to reframe the app from being a simple daily tool, the campaign celebrates Notion as a system that saves precious time for creativity.

“Productivity tools require a lot of investment, there is a pretty steep barrier to entry, but if you stick with it, you can reach this moment of enlightenment. We wanted to bottle up that feeling and bring the viewer into the minds of knowledge workers everywhere – illustrating how Notion can make sense of our beautifully complex lives, becoming a playground for work or play, from the everyday to the extraordinary,” says Ben Langsfeld, chief design officer at Buck.

After several years developing the brand’s former illustration style, working with in-house illustrator Roman Muradov, the team at Notion were curious to see where their visual world could go next. “We’d settled into a groove and it was important for this campaign to change some things up. Some of that meant introducing new creative voices we respected (enter Buck),” says Rob. The creative team at Buck worked with Rob and his team to expand upon Notion’s identity in collaboration with Roman, by (quite literally) zooming in on the illustrator’s characters to “get inside their heads, and see them thinking and making”, he explains.

Making these characters a little more distinct in their differences and heroic in their scale, Buck aimed to visualise the idea of building workflows that are unique for everyone. “We got quite technical with textures for skin tone and clothing patterns. Skin tones were a radial halftone with the density varied to differentiate characters. Clothing patterns were linear halftones or drawn patterns,” says Ben. As for the line work on Notion’s illustrated gang, the team were inspired by Saul Steinberg’s drawings which perfectly show “the flow of a thought”, as well as metaphors about Notion as a physical space: “a tidy calm space where you can do your best thinking” (hence all the building blocks and tiny books).

With characters flying in on giant pencils and building up colourful castles, Buck wanted to “reinforce a sense of playfulness and progress in every scene”, says Ben, to frame their new features (powered by AI) as a relief from the stress of the menial and mundane tasks that hold you back from doing the fun stuff. “The campaign idea is really about play and how Notion is the one-stop-shop for all your knowledge and work, freeing up your mind to focus on what matters most… the things that inspire you and bring you joy.”