When someone lands a new job or marks a work anniversary on LinkedIn, the moment deserves more than a generic graphic. For the platform’s billion-plus users, these milestones matter… and the visuals accompanying them should reflect that significance.
Design studio BUCK recently partnered with LinkedIn to update the platform’s celebration graphics: the in-feed illustrations that mark career moments such as new roles, certifications and work anniversaries. The result is a set of 16 animated illustrations that users can choose from, each designed to work across cultures while giving people room to express how they want to celebrate.
“These new visuals are like meticulously chosen artwork that bring the house of LinkedIn to life, making milestone moments feel more personal, more vibrant, and more you,” says Sarah Alpern, LinkedIn’s vice president of architecture and head of design.
For BUCK’s art director, Twisha Patni, and her team, the project meant solving a deceptively complex problem: how to create illustrations that feel meaningful to a global audience without resorting to tired visual clichés?
Building a system, not just a collection
The brief was straightforward but ambitious. “LinkedIn approached BUCK to reimagine their ‘celebration’ moments,” Twisha recalls. “The ask was twofold: to develop a refreshed illustration and motion system that felt expressive, elevated and globally resonant, while also reflecting LinkedIn’s evolving brand direction.”
The project moved quickly—10 weeks from strategy to delivery—with BUCK leading design and animation whilst collaborating closely with LinkedIn’s brand and product teams. “They were clear, thoughtful, and incredibly receptive to creative exploration,” Twisha says. “They wanted to give LinkedIn members a wider range of expression to represent their important milestones on LinkedIn.”
That emphasis on range became central to the work. Rather than landing on a single visual style, BUCK’s strategy team first helped articulate LinkedIn’s brand role as what they call “an active guide”, helping members navigate change and discover opportunity.
From there, they established design attributes and creative constants that would create cohesion across different illustration styles whilst ensuring clear attribution to LinkedIn’s master brand.
“Based on guidance from LinkedIn and insights from our strategy exploration, we developed a family of cohesive illustration styles,” Twisha explains. “These styles flexed broadly across tone to ensure universal accessibility and resonance. Our conversations delved into what ‘celebration’ means across cultures, roles and milestones. We wanted to avoid tired tropes in favour of something more surprising and meaningful, ensuring that users connected to illustrations on an emotional level.”
User experience research reinforced this thinking. As Twisha notes, the key insight was that “emotional resonance matters as much as visual design, and colour amplifies this impact.”
The glow-up
Audrey Davis, LinkedIn’s director of product design and creative systems, described the refresh as “a big glow-up”, a characterisation that naturally delighted the BUCK team. But what does that mean in concrete design terms?
“The ‘glow-up’ refers to expanding the visual language by bringing in more intentional storytelling,” Twisha explains. “The visual system needed to flex across different types of milestones, ranging from bold and momentous to small and quietly meaningful. We built layered compositions, introduced gestural moments, and created visual metaphors that were more witty, clear, editorial and approachable.”
The work evolved from LinkedIn’s existing celebration system, which was rooted in geometric shapes: circles, squares, and clean forms. BUCK fused these with organic elements, natural textures and human gestures to introduce warmth without abandoning that structural foundation.
“This blend of geometric and organic allowed us to communicate structure and growth simultaneously,” Twisha says. “It also mirrored the balance LinkedIn is trying to strike in its brand: professional but human, global but personal, sincere but expressive.”
Metaphors that work everywhere
Developing distinct visual metaphors that resonate across cultures required methodical thinking. “We began by identifying universal themes like inspiration, collaboration, achievement and innovation,” Twisha says. “Then we translated those into metaphors that felt fresh, accessible and familiar at a glance. We steered away from overused tropes, opting for visual ideas that were simple but open to interpretation.”
Throughout the process, every concept was vetted through a lens of cultural neutrality. “LinkedIn was instrumental in this step, bringing in their own research and insights to ensure nothing felt alienating or overly specific,” Twisha notes.
The studio developed four distinct illustration styles tied to its system principles, ranging from textured, hand-crafted moments to bold geometric compositions and subtle gradient effects. “This versatility gave us the range to speak to LinkedIn’s global, multicultural audience without leaning too far into any one metaphor or mood,” Twisha explains.
Strategic thinking
Making the illustrations user-selectable wasn’t just about variety; it was a fundamental design decision rooted in understanding how people experience milestones differently.
“Celebration in a professional or personal context has many different tonal ranges,” Twisha says. “What feels joyful or momentous to one user might feel quiet or reflective to another. By identifying themes that work across this tonal range, from calm to optimistic to energetic, we were able to craft a range of visuals that can give users the option to choose how they mark their milestone, adding a layer of emotional intelligence to the product.”
This approach also meant the illustrations needed to flex across an emotional spectrum whilst remaining cohesive. “Strategically, it’s a way for LinkedIn to show care and consideration for its users’ individuality without sacrificing brand consistency,” Twisha says.
Brand recognition
LinkedIn’s signature blue both constrained and presented an opportunity. BUCK’s solution was elegant: treat it as “a thread rather than a boundary”.
“In every illustration, there’s a focal or supporting moment where that brand colour quietly anchors the composition,” Twisha explains. “Around that, we introduced an expanded palette of neutrals and accent tones that supported emotional tone and metaphor. This gave us room to create vibrant or minimal compositions depending on the moment, without losing brand clarity. The result is a visual system that feels unmistakably LinkedIn but far more expressive and editorial.”
Motion added the final layer. “The animations used seamless loops, static cameras and small storytelling gestures to feel reflective and purposeful without overwhelming the feed,” Twisha says. “Even the quietest animations have rhythm and personality: a flower spinning, people bending large plants in unison, confetti popping from a keyboard. These gestures add dimension and help users feel like their milestone is not just noticed, but valued.”
The animation team also solved technical challenges, finding smart techniques to refine and optimise lightweight JSON file sizes whilst making each frame feel dimensional and dynamic.
Representing people at scale
With over a billion users, inclusive character representation required careful consideration. “In some illustrations, people are represented through universal gestures, such as hands passing an object or feet in motion,” Twisha explains. “This allowed for relatability without specificity. Where full characters were depicted, we focused on variety in form, skin tone, and styling while avoiding overly literal or prescriptive identities.”
The goal, she says, was creating work that “felt open, considered, and reflective of LinkedIn’s global audience.” Editorial cropping and thoughtful composition helped balance clarity with inclusivity, creating a feel that’s natural rather than formulaic.
Overall, this project demonstrates how thoughtful illustration systems can bring humanity and cultural resonance to global platforms, turning what could be generic digital moments into something that feels genuinely personal.
For creative professionals working at scale, it’s a helpful reminder that constraint and flexibility aren’t opposites. Sometimes the most expressive systems are built on the clearest foundations.
