Nate Otto and I made a new Basecamp homepage illustration based on a vector drawing I made in Adobe Illustrator. Initially I didn’t intend it to be hand drawn. I thought I’d refine the vector drawing. Somewhere in the middle it turned into “herding cats”. In the end the spirit of the concept was intact, but the result very different from what I’d envisioned.
Here’s how we got to the final idea: Basecamp helps you wrangle people with different roles, responsibilities, and objectives toward a common goal: Finishing a project together.

First pass: Basecamp is a central hub. All the things going into it are like train lines.

Train lines are pretty boring. What if it was about herding cats? Lemme put some vector cat heads on there.
The vector style doesn’t fit with the rest of the site. I work with Nate on the idea of Basecamp as being the ultimate “cat herder”. Give the cats some human accessories…
Jason Fried is concerned that “herding cats” may come across as insulting. The idea of herding cats may be lost on some potential customers. Maybe we should just be clear.
Final: Let’s add all the people involved in the process.


This process took about one day of back and forth (in Basecamp) between me and Nate. So, that’s how we made the illustration for the idea: Basecamp helps you wrangle people with different roles, responsibilities, and objectives toward a common goal: Finishing a project together.