Forget the slogan. Forget the launch film. In 2024, the most powerful expression of your brand isn’t a campaign, it’s that one moment inside the product that makes a user pause, smile, or say “Oh, that was clever.”
At SXSW London, design leaders from Slack, Dropbox, and Anthropic came together to unpack how those moments are built. And just as importantly, how they’re protected.
Moderated by design executive Rachel Gogel, the conversation featured:
Heather Phillips, Sr. Director of Product Design at Slack
Liz Gilmore, Director of Brand at Dropbox
Everett Katigbak, Creative Director at Anthropic
Each brought a unique view on how brand and product teams can create emotional, on-brand moments inside digital products without overstepping into noise or gimmickry.
From Campaigns to Conversations: How Brand Now “Talks Back”
At Anthropic, brand isn’t a voice. It’s a conversation. Everett Katigbak reflected on the surreal shift in AI UX: “You’re literally talking to the product. It talks back.” That’s a foundational change. The product is no longer a passive experience. It’s an active participant.
For design leaders, that means evolving from visual storytelling into tone, rhythm, and dialogue. “It’s not a chrome frame around content anymore,” Katigbak said. “It’s two beings, one human, one machine, texting each other.”
Anthropic’s brand system embraces texture, tactility, and analog feel—but stays deliberately subtle. The brand’s job is to signal humanity and trust, without overpowering the functional interface. It’s brand as presence, not performance.
The Bespoke Balance: When Magic Enhances, Not Distracts
Heather Phillips’ team at Slack is responsible for many of the product’s most delightful in-flow moments animations, confirmations, micro-coaching. But delight can be overdone.
“If confetti flies out of every corner of the screen, you’re no longer helping people work, you’re getting in the way,” she said.
Slack’s answer? A design principle they call “Be a Good Host.” That means showing up with the right prompt, at the right time, before the user even realizes they need it. “Like handing someone a glass of water before they realize they’re thirsty,” Phillips explained.
Slack’s “magic” isn’t decorative, it’s anticipatory. The team recently conducted a full audit of every branded moment in the product, mapping when it appears, what features are active, and what emotion or task state the user is in. The goal: fewer, more meaningful moments that enhance, not interrupt, the flow of work.
Brand as Infrastructure: The Dropbox Model
Dropbox, once known for its wildly expressive visual language, is now focused on building systems that scale. Liz Gilmore, who leads the Brand Studio team, described the evolution: “We had 265 typefaces. It was expressive but inconsistent.”
Her team now defines a refined global brand system what Gilmore calls “the six essential elements of Dropbox-ness.” That core system then extends horizontally across surfaces: marketing, onboarding, and in-product UX.
The magic? That happens selectively. “When everything sparkles, nothing sparkles,” she said. Gilmore’s rule: moments of delight must align with key emotional or functional thresholds. For example:
First use → onboarding as a brand handshake
Frustration points → support cues with warmth, not cartoon cheer
Accomplishment → subtle celebration, not fireworks
This approach avoids noise while reinforcing brand equity where it matters.
Org Models: Embedded, Horizontal, Co-Located
All three leaders emphasized one shared truth: the org model matters as much as the creative brief.
Slack’s team is embedded within product design but includes motion, narrative, and brand disciplines. Dropbox’s brand team is horizontal, with the ability to engage across the org. At Anthropic, product and brand teams are structurally separate but spiritually aligned, sharing critiques, roadmaps, and early inputs.
What made each model work? Two things:
Leadership conviction that brand is strategic, not ornamental.
People and process aligned to co-create, not just execute.
Looking Ahead: What Makes It Work
Each leader closed with reflections on what enables brand–product integration at scale:
Heather Phillips: People + process. You need the right disciplines in the room and recurring rhythms of collaboration between brand, systems, and product.
Liz Gilmore: Connection drives craft. A team that feels connected to one another creates work that connects with users. Culture and craft go hand in hand.
Everett Katigbak: Products now have personalities. Whether it’s AI, AR, or ambient experiences, the brand is no longer a wrapper it’s the personality users talk to.
Key Takeaways
Brand expression is shifting from visual chrome to conversational tone especially in AI-driven products.
Delight must be disciplined. Brand should enhance usability, not distract from it.
Moments of magic work best when they map to emotional inflection points: onboarding, success, confusion, frustration.
Cross-functional collaboration isn’t optional. Org structure and process rhythm define whether magic actually ships.
Teams need connection, not just briefs. The alchemy behind branded experiences is human-first, system-supported.
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