Original People: Modular Illustration System

Original People is a custom family sticker startup from Spain, founded by Fredrik and Mia Svenson. Their product is simple: customers design a sticker family that represents their household, choosing from hundreds of categories covering faces, professions, hobbies, pets, and symbols.

The challenge was scale. With that many variations (4 age groups, 2 gender variants, pets, symbols, and hundreds of profession/hobby combinations), they couldn't produce illustrations one by one. They needed a modular illustration system that could generate massive volumes of unique sticker configurations while keeping every asset consistent in style, proportion, and production quality.

The customer base spans a wide range:

Middle-class families creating stickers for cars, laptops, and home decor

Small communities and social groups wanting custom team representations

Sports teams ordering matching sticker sets

Professionals looking for personalized sticker figures of their occupation

The common thread: everyone wants a sticker that looks like them. The system had to produce recognizable, charming figures across every demographic and interest.

Step 1: Build the grid system. I designed a precise grid and sizing system that works across both screen and print. Every dimension had to be exact, because the same illustrations are displayed on the website (where customers configure their stickers) and then printed as the final physical product. Any mismatch between screen preview and print output would mean customer complaints and reprints.

Step 2: Map the full category taxonomy. I organized all commonly ordered sticker types into a structured system: 4 age categories (adult, teen, child, baby), 2 gender variants (male, female), plus pet and symbol categories. This taxonomy became the backbone of the entire illustration library.

Step 3: Draw within constraints. Working from Fredrik and Mia's briefs, I illustrated each figure in a minimalist stickman style that remains recognizable at small sizes. We prioritized the highest-selling profiles first (police officer, tech worker, holiday person, etc.) and expanded from there. Every figure had to read clearly as a tiny sticker on a car window.

The most important decision: one file, two outputs.

Every sticker category lives in a single source file that produces both the screen version (for the website configurator) and the print version (for physical production). By keeping one file per category, I ensured the versioning number of every avatar figure stays identical across both outputs. This eliminates order errors: what the customer sees on screen is exactly what gets printed.

The single-file approach also gave me speed and flexibility. The difference between print and screen output comes down to stroke weight: thick lines for print (readable at physical sticker size), thin lines for screen (clean at pixel resolution). One adjustment, two production-ready outputs. No duplicate files, no sync issues, no version drift.

Over a 10-year engagement, this system scaled to 100,000+ unique assets.

Original People operated as a Sociedad Limitada (S.L.) in Spain with a team of under 10 people. According to Spanish business registry data (Iberinform and eInforma), the company was classified in the annual revenue bracket of EUR 0 to EUR 1,500,000, with sales trends recorded as "Aumenta" (increasing) consistently throughout its operating years.

For context, the average annual turnover for comparable companies in the internet retail and printing sector in that region was approximately EUR 247,000. Original People's custom illustration concept placed their financial performance well above the industry average.

The strength of the product and its illustration system ultimately attracted acquisition interest. Original People was acquired by Stikets, validating both the business model and the modular design system that powered it.