Makombo
Makombo was built for groups who'd rather argue about which beach to visit than who forgot to book the hotel. The team asked for a visual language that lived beyond the interface: editorial illustrations built to make you feel the energy of a trip being planned together.
The feeling of planning together.
The brief was clear but demanding: make planning feel like part of the trip, not the chore before it. Skip the checklists and split-bill calculators, and capture the energy of a group deciding together instead: the map spread across a table, the debate over which detour is worth it, the particular joy of an itinerary nobody had to build alone. Four pieces. Four moments. Each one a small argument for going as a group.
Editorial voice, collective soul.
Most travel-app illustration leans solitary: a single figure with a suitcase, a lone silhouette at a gate. Makombo needed something different, a visual identity built around groups, where the energy came from people planning, deciding, and moving together. We started with pencil sketches, letting the line work stay loose and gestural, building each piece around a feeling rather than a destination: the chaos of five people choosing one itinerary, the relief of a plan finally coming together, the shared excitement of a trip that belongs to everyone in it.
The palette pulled from Makombo's own bold blues, paired with warm sand tones, the colors of a map table and the trip it's pointing toward. These illustrations were designed to do the same job as strong copy: make the product feel worth opening before a single feature is explained.
Your product,
built right.
Great products need a visual voice before the first user signs up. If you're building something worth traveling toward, we know how to make it look like it.
