MALT
Graphic design: June - August 2025
Malt is Europe’s leading freelance management platform and marketplace, simplifying the way companies and freelancers collaborate. By seamlessly connecting businesses with top independent professionals, Malt streamlines project execution and accelerates business growth—making the search for industry talent easier than ever.
For this project, I was tasked with creating artwork for an explainer animation that compares the process of hiring a permanent employee versus a freelancer. The animation, designed for Malt’s website, aimed to clarify the benefits of freelance hiring. My role involved conceptualizing the visual breakdown of this comparison and developing the artwork, which was then handed over to the motion designer for animation.
You can check out the animation on Malt’s website here! (Video coming soon).
brand guidelines and illustrative style
I broke down the provided brief into clear sections that the motion graphics artist and I felt would offer enough on-screen context, supported by explainer text along the bottom. Once we had this structure in place, I got to work creating the animation artwork frame by frame, laying out all my designs in a storyboard.
Before starting anything, I carefully studied the brand guidelines to ensure that the final visuals would align with the client’s aesthetic and meet their expectations during the feedback stage. Their brand is bright, bold, and distinctive, with a unique illustration style — so when it came to creating my own assets, I made sure to replicate that style precisely.
The client said I had nailed the illustrative art style and that the visuals were spot on. You can check out Malt’s brand guidelines here.
Storyboarding
Storytelling is a crucial tool for visualising and the planning of an animation project, it creates a roadmap for the flow and narrative of an animation, helping anyone to understand how one section transitions through to another, but in a static format.
Once I had established the section breakdowns, brand guidelines, and illustrative style, I was ready to create a storyboard tailored to this project.
The explainer animation focuses on comparing the cost of hiring a permanent employee versus a freelance back-end developer. The goal was to highlight that there isn’t a significant difference in cost between the two options. Throughout the storyboard, you’ll see a clear price comparison between them. By the end, the costs nearly align—demonstrating that hiring a freelancer can be just as effective as hiring a permanent employee, with the added benefit of flexibility.
You can view the full storyboard, in a PDF format, which was shared and sign off by the client by clicking the image.
Animation
The final animation consisted of 2 version. 1 full length animation for the website and 2 condensed versions for their social media channels.
Full length explainer animation for website usage (Final Video Coming Soon - This is V1).