Tumblr Year in Review 2022
Client: Tumblr
Industry: Entertainment / Internet Culture, Brand & Marketing Design
Role: Art Direction, Editorial & Graphic Design, Visual Identity Development
Date: 2022
Each December, Tumblr publishes its Year in Review—a digital retrospective celebrating the top trends, fandoms, and cultural moments that defined the platform. For 2022, I led art direction and visual design for the entire experience, crafting a bold, expressive system that captured the platform’s chaotic energy, humor, and niche communities.
The Tumblr audience is diverse, hyper-engaged, and deeply attuned to internet culture. The challenge was to create a design language that could tie together over 30 editorial lists across topics like media, gaming, memes, and ships—while still feeling cohesive, fresh, and true to Tumblr’s personality.
process
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process ⬩
I developed a dynamic, modular design system that leaned into the surreal, maximalist energy Tumblr is known for. The typography chosen for this project is based on my own handwriting, which adds a unique and fun appearance to the overall design. By using my own handwriting as the basis for the typography, it creates a personal touch that sets the project apart from others. The irregularities and quirks of my handwriting bring a sense of authenticity and individuality to the text, making it visually engaging and memorable.
Inspired by early internet aesthetics and fan art culture, the graphics uses the handwritten, warped typography, layered gradients, and animated textures to create a sense of motion and digital decay—embracing the "too much" in a way only Tumblr could.
Primary Heading
Color Palette
Components
Initial Sketches
I began by sketching the visuals in Procreate to explore expressive forms and composition. Once finalized, I imported the artwork into Adobe Illustrator to create clean vector assets, which were then animated in Adobe After Effects for the final delivery.
results
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results ⬩
The 2022 Year in Review achieved record engagement, drawing millions of visits and shares across Tumblr and social platforms. The design system successfully anchored an editorial experience that was playful, chaotic, and celebratory—earning praise from users and internal teams alike. Each component created was easily transferrable across various digital, and OOH marketing graphics to further promote the year-end campaign, raising brand awareness and relevance across multiple outputs.
I worked across teams to enhance the user experience of the landing page and also collaborated with Tumblr’s international translations team to design custom header graphics for 18 supported languages, ensuring cultural relevance and visual consistency across regions. This localization effort helped expand the campaign’s global reach and drove 10M+ impressions.
These posters were created to be posted throughout cities in the US, amplifying the messaging that Tumblr is the place on the internet for fandom and art.
