11 Comments
Oct 5Liked by Roman Muradov

This is so good! I have AI turned off on Notion but I love the lil guy and his wavy eyebrows and it's fascinating to see the stages you went through to get to it. The 'error' expression is heartbreaking!

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author

Hah yea, had to fight a bit to have the more abstract stuff in but once it was animated, everything fell together.

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Oct 12Liked by Roman Muradov

These explorations really are delightful, the playful eyebrows alone are SO much more expressive than I thought two lines could ever be. Really wonderful work, thanks for the behind the scenes!

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This was so fun to read, thank you for sharing your process!

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Sep 30Liked by Roman Muradov

So cool seeing the process of designing that face! Always been perplexed by how much mouthless designs can express.

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Oh I loved seeing the process! Made me try out the feature immediately. The face is so expressive!! It reminds me of going on the family computer as a child, opening Word, and just typing things in a doc for the sake of Clippy.

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author

Thanks, that’s a sweet memory!

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Hahaha same! I miss Clippy, he made work so much more enjoyable!

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The Notion assistant is the cutest! When I was flipping through my sketchbook of watercolor blob illustrations yesterday, I stumbled across a note I made that "the birds are cute, the sea creatures are more interesting, we know what birds look like...there are a million things under the sea we haven't seen and don't understand." Your post is helping provide additional contact to that instinct!

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Wow. I was just this moment telling a collegue that - though I have zero interest in using AI assistants etc, there's just "something about the new Notion face that makes me feel good/want to interact with it". Makes sense when somebody whos work I so admire is the one behind the design. Please do tell Notion that you've converted somebody who was strictly "I do not want to touch these things, at all" to diving in because of the strength of your design.

Also very cool to see the pages of work-in-progress.

ALSO - when thinking about shape, legibility, seeing 'tooth' next to 'brain' felt like an important moment.

Really look forward to your newsletters. Thank you for writing them!

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author

Thank you! I’ve actually never used it myself and still have all Ai turned off everywhere.

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