Thomas Moulson | Graphic Designer & Animator

Design 🤝 SEO

Pandable was a small SEO agency, and I was brought in as their first in-house designer. There was no creative function when I arrived, meaning no brand beyond a logo, no design templates, and no way to offer clients visual assets to help boost their SEO. My job was to build Pandable's brand while simultaneously delivering creative work across a growing roster of exciting clients.

Design 🤝 SEO

Pandable was a small SEO agency, and I was brought in as their first in-house designer. There was no creative function when I arrived, meaning no brand beyond a logo, no design templates, and no way to offer clients visual assets to help boost their SEO. My job was to build Pandable's brand while simultaneously delivering creative work across a growing roster of exciting clients.

Building Pandable's Brand Identity

As an agency trying to win clients across different industries, the brand needed to strike a careful balance: distinctive enough to be memorable, let the owners personality come through, but remain versatile enough as not to alienate more conservative clients.

The easy win was that the agency name 'Pandable' leads itself to a mascot: a panda. I created a series of isometric panda mascots that gave the agency a bit of personality and a sense of humour, which was influenced by the owners lighthearted nature, which I believed would help make them more approachable and recognisable online.

Building Pandable's Brand Identity

As an agency trying to win clients across different industries, the brand needed to strike a careful balance: distinctive enough to be memorable, let the owners personality come through, but remain versatile enough as not to alienate more conservative clients.

The easy win was that the agency name 'Pandable' leads itself to a mascot: a panda. I created a series of isometric panda mascots that gave the agency a bit of personality and a sense of humour, which was influenced by the owners lighthearted nature, which I believed would help make them more approachable and recognisable online.

But the identity, unfortunately, couldn't live and die by the pandas, so alongside them I developed a suite of minimal, abstract illustrations that gave the brand a more serious, professional vibe to be when the work called for it (for client case studies, expertise blogs, etc).

Illustration: Paper Republic

For Paper Republic, a literary lifestyle brand, I produced a series of cityscape illustrations for a piece about famous literary cities. The challenge was to capture the character of each city—Paris, Dublin, London, and others—using only a handful of landmarks and a limited colour palette.

It's the kind of brief that sounds simple but isn't. Reducing a city to three colours and a few shapes while keeping it instantly recognisable was challenging, but rewarding, and it remains one of my favourite pieces of work.

Illustration: Paper Republic

For Paper Republic, a literary lifestyle brand, I produced a series of cityscape illustrations for a piece about famous literary cities. The challenge was to capture the character of each city—Paris, Dublin, London, and others—using only a handful of landmarks and a limited colour palette.

It's the kind of brief that sounds simple but isn't. Reducing a city to three colours and a few shapes while keeping it instantly recognisable was challenging, but rewarding, and it remains one of my favourite pieces of work.

Working Within an Existing Style: CardConnect

CardConnect had a well-established illustration style built by a previous designer, and the brief was to stick as closely to it as possible. I wasn't a big fan of this to begine with, because I felt like it would be less creative to copy someone else's work, but it was actually really fun to deconstruct someone else's style, and understanding how they built what they built. It was like seeing through another designer's thought process and I learned so many different techniques from doing this.

Working Within an Existing Style: CardConnect

CardConnect had a well-established illustration style built by a previous designer, and the brief was to stick as closely to it as possible. I wasn't a big fan of this to begine with, because I felt like it would be less creative to copy someone else's work, but it was actually really fun to deconstruct someone else's style, and understanding how they built what they built. It was like seeing through another designer's thought process and I learned so many different techniques from doing this.

UI/UX Design: QYNN

For QYNN, a business data platform, I designed the UI/UX for a web application that made complex company data accessible to non-technical users. The challenge was familiar — taking something dense and technical and presenting it in a way that felt clear, useful and human.

I focused on clean tables, filters and summary cards that surfaced key insights at a glance, and made sure the interface worked just as well on mobile as on desktop. Working closely with the data engineers to understand what they considered important, and then translating that into something a non-technical user could navigate intuitively, is exactly the kind of problem I enjoy solving.

UI/UX Design: QYNN

For QYNN, a business data platform, I designed the UI/UX for a web application that made complex company data accessible to non-technical users. The challenge was familiar — taking something dense and technical and presenting it in a way that felt clear, useful and human.

I focused on clean tables, filters and summary cards that surfaced key insights at a glance, and made sure the interface worked just as well on mobile as on desktop. Working closely with the data engineers to understand what they considered important, and then translating that into something a non-technical user could navigate intuitively, is exactly the kind of problem I enjoy solving.