Sprout Social Brand Expression for Smaller Teams
2026
Role
Visual Strategy
Art Direction
AI Image Direction & Generation
Core Creative Team
Tracy Wilcox (Web Design)
Jesus Montesois (Dev)
Kelsey Gregorc (Creative Direction)
As Sprout Social expanded its positioning toward a more sophisticated, enterprise-focused Social Intelligence platform, a growing gap emerged for smaller teams and hands-on social practitioners. I led the visual strategy and art direction for a tailored expression designed to speak more directly to this audience without creating a separate sub-brand. The system launched across a personalized homepage experience and paid media, with a visual language built around immediacy, energy and the day-to-day reality of social media work.
Defining the expression: Making Sprout feel right-sized, not stripped down
Rather than create a separate sub-brand, I defined how Sprout’s existing system could flex more intentionally for this audience. The core foundations stayed the same, but the emphasis shifted toward brighter color, lighter backgrounds, more expressive typography, practitioner-focused photography, simplified product UI and social-native visual cues.
The goal was to make the experience feel tailored and immediate without losing the equity of the core brand. Every decision was designed to bring the work closer to the way these buyers actually engage with social: fast, hands-on, culturally aware and focused on practical value.
Building the AI photography system
I built the photography system around a repeatable workflow that could create distinct, on-brand image sets without losing consistency. I began by sourcing reference imagery to define each character’s look and styling, then developed complementary environments and sets before bringing the two together into final compositions.
The goal was to create imagery that felt energetic, current and close to the world of a hands-on social practitioner, while staying clearly separate from the darker, more cinematic photography direction used for Sprout’s enterprise-facing Social Intelligence work.
While the workflow can look fairly linear once documented, getting to a usable final image often required many rounds of generation and targeted refinement. I iterated on composition, wardrobe, props, lighting and environmental details, then corrected common AI artifacts such as garbled text, inconsistent objects and small visual irregularities.
Final images were composited and retouched in Photoshop, where I could fine-tune details, clean up artifacts and bring multiple generated elements together into a more polished, intentional result.
The final library was built across three audience contexts: Retail, Travel & Hospitality, and Generalist. Each set used its own characters, environments and props to make the work feel more relevant to the buyer’s world, while maintaining the same overall art direction, color energy and visual language across the system. Together, the three sets gave the team a flexible image library that could feel specific without fragmenting the broader brand expression.
Bringing the expression to a personalized homepage
One of the first major applications of the system was a personalized homepage experience built specifically for smaller teams and hands-on practitioners. I art directed the Senior Lead Web Designer, helping translate the new expression into a page that felt more immediate, approachable and relevant to this audience while still staying connected to the broader Sprout experience.
The page leaned into brighter color, practitioner-focused photography, simplified product storytelling and clearer trial-oriented messaging, creating a more tailored entry point without turning the experience into a separate brand or product universe.
What the system unlocked
The work gives Sprout Social a more flexible way to adapt its brand by audience without breaking it apart. By defining which elements can shift and which need to remain consistent, the system gives smaller teams and hands-on practitioners a more relevant entry point while preserving a clear connection to the broader brand.