Background
Postgres has one of the most loyal developer communities around, and those developers were exactly who Timescale wanted to reach. The idea was to give them something genuinely useful: a survey of the Postgres community, published as an immersive story, with a newsletter signup for anyone who wanted more.
Beyond a spreadsheet
Developer reports usually look like a boring spreadsheet. I wanted this one to have personality, so I turned the Postgres elephant into a cast of 3D characters. The goal was a report people would want to share, not just skim.
Building it
The elephants were sketched by hand first, in different poses. Each pose needed to be visually interesting and support the narrative. Later, the chosen scenes were modeled in 3D and animated in Blender. Finally, I brought each animated sequence into Three.js, where I lit it.
Giving the quotes a personality
Survey quotes can read like a wall of text, so each one got its own small 3D moment. A wagging tail for the developer who never fell for the hype, a fidget spinner for the one who picked MongoDB because it was the latest fad.
Result
It brought in thousands of newsletter signups, and worked well enough that State of Postgres became a yearly report. It showed that even a developer survey could be something people look forward to.
- Role
- Concept, design, art direction
- Built
- Three.js
- Shipped
- stateofpostgres.com
- Outcome
- Thousands of signups; became a yearly report