The Beam Experience
Combining journey maps into a visual medium
Intro
Team: Solo Project
Role: Illustrator, Production Artist, Journey Mapper
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Timeframe: 6 months
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Tools: Illustration, Journey Mapping, Adobe Photoshop, Figma
As part of a vision setting project, I made a comic depicting our customer segments' journeys from beginning to end. This is an ideal customer journey, so not everything maps 1 to 1 with our current processes, but as a vision setting project, processes are necessarily idealized.
Original Journey
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To get the story straight, a cross functional team of designers and senior team leadership worked together to create the end to end journey. With much editing and collaboration, the journey we came up with depicts the ideal journey of a member, a broker, and a group from open enrollment to using benefits. The piece covers benefits research, getting a quote, implementation and enrollment, member experience, broker experience, and renewal.
Thumbs
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Storyboarding for comics
​Thumbnailing maps out roughly what each panel will look like in the context of a page and the specific panels themselves. Thumbnailing is very much an iterative process and what is presented here is the product of many drafts and revisions.
Character Exploration
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The look of our cast
Before moving onto pencils, I did some character exploration to make sure our main characters were true to the roles they play. The character of Bob took the most revisions as we wanted to be most sensitive to what a broker looks like.
Round 1 Character Sketches
Round 2 Character Sketches
Round 3 Character Sketches
Final Character Sketch
Pencils
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Mid-Fidelity Comic
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The pencil stage of the comic process is when things start to take on a form that we recognize as a comic, moving from loose drawings to tight ones. If there are any major changes to the art, this is the stage to do it before moving onto the inking stage.
Inks
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High-Fidelity Comic
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As the name suggests, inking is when ink is applied to the pencils. At this stage all changes should be granular.
Lettering
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The voice of comics
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As the lettering is applied, any small changes to the copy should be made.
Color
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Palette and vibrancy
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A hearty discussion around color palette took place to determine what the final hue of the comic would be. Eventually, we decided on a blue palette to echo Beam’s own palette. While I decided to use Beam blue as an accent, I did not use any other brand colors because they did not work in the context of the comic.
Final Color Palette
Connective tissue
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Ancillary assets for the Beam comic
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Adding in the cover page and introducing characters is a great way to ease the reader into this comic. These connective tissues help sew the comic together in a cohesive manner so that the experience is pleasant for the reader. Additionally, I added some flair with some illustrations of “the dogs of Beam” and the history of Beam.
Back Cover
Inside Cover
Character Bios
Company Timeline
Title Page
The Dogs of Beam/ The End
Cover
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Judging a book by its cover
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With the insides or guts of the comic finalized, the cover is the final step. As with every stage of the process, this is iterative, as I made several concepts then moved on to a more final version.
Final
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Comics in concrete form
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The culmination of months of cross team collaboration and iteration, I had 50 copies printed for the onsite in March of 2024. The final piece covers benefits research, getting a quote, implementation and enrollment, member experience, broker experience, and renewal.
Learnings
Bridging the gap between comics and UX
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Not everyone has the skills or experience to create compelling and effective comics, even if they have valuable expertise to share. Subject matter experts often have deep knowledge and important ideas but may struggle to translate these concepts into the visual and narrative language of comics.By collaborating with an experienced comic creator such as myself, they can bridge this gap, combining their specialized knowledge with the artist’s storytelling and design skills. Together, we can craft engaging, accessible, and visually impactful comics that break down complex topics, connect with diverse audiences, and deliver messages in a way that is both entertaining and informative.