Calm is a mental wellness app offering meditation, sleep, and relaxation tools to millions of users worldwide. Designed to reduce stress and improve sleep, it is one of the most recognised names in the mental health and wellbeing space.
Working as an extension of Calm’s in-house team, I progressed from designer to creative lead on the account at OLS – directing and designing across in-app, social, marketing, user acquisition, and large multi-channel campaigns.
Sleep Story Artwork
In-app content made up a large component of our Calm work, primarily cover artwork for Calm’s Sleep Stories across different language markets. Briefs varied from open and conceptual to highly specific, and we always presented at least three options with in-app mockups to minimise unnecessary feedback rounds.
Leading this work involved clarifying briefs with project managers, briefing and directing designers on both imagery and typography, and providing clear internal feedback throughout.
On the design side, the process involved sourcing stock imagery and typefaces, and using AI tools such as Midjourney alongside manual techniques – with AI used to assist in generating components of the artwork rather than producing finished pieces.
Social
In 2025, we started taking on more and more social projects to support Calm’s in-house social team. By nature, social briefs are high volume with a quick turnaround, so design teams need to be agile in order to respond to these effectively and efficiently.
Briefs included both organic and paid (user acquisition) social content, primarily consisting of video for Instagram Reels and TikTok, static and carousel posts for Instagram, and marketing assets to promote Calm’s in-app content.
Partnerships
A recurring type of work for the Calm account involved collaborating with partner brands to produce breathe bubbles – visualised breathing exercises animated for use across social and in-app.
For each partnership, we developed two to three concepts with accompanying mini storyboards for the partner brand to review and approve before moving into animation. The process ran from initial concept through to final delivery, with finished assets used across both Calm’s and the partner’s social channels, and linked to directly from within the app.
Partner brands spanned a range of industries, including ASICS (activewear), Soundcore by Anker (audio products), Omnipod (insulin pump system), and SaskTel (telecommunications) – showcasing the adaptability required to translate each brand’s identity into a cohesive, on-brand Calm experience.
Image Sourcing
A weekly recurring project we worked on with Calm was sourcing stock images for their blog. As anyone who’s worked with stock imagery knows, it can prove a challenge to select images that don’t look too posed or too obviously “stock”. Each week we’d get given around 12-15 topics, ranging from straightforward to abstract, and we’d send back at least 4x Getty image options for each – incorporating a mix of people-focused and nature/abstract images. Some examples of topics include: death anxiety, circadian rhythm disorder, can you be friends with your ex, high cortisol in women, invisible string theory, neurohacking, and euthymic mood.
