About CyberGhost VPN
CyberGhost VPN is a privacy-focused cybersecurity brand serving over 15 million users worldwide. Its core promise is to make online privacy accessible and friendly. Central to this image has always been “Ghostie,” the brand's cheerful mascot, known for its bright yellow color and friendly shape.
Over time, however, Ghostie had become visually dated, lacking the emotional versatility and visual cohesion needed to support a growing brand and complex marketing ecosystem.
As the brand scaled, the mascot had to carry more stories across more channels without losing clarity.
TL;DR
Goal: Redesign Ghostie into a flexible, expressive mascot that supports storytelling and scales across teams and campaigns.
Role: Design lead and art director, led mascot evolution, built illustration system, and drove internal adoption
Issues: Rigid visuals, flat rendering, limited emotional range, one-off assets, no usage guidelines.
Recommendations: Create modular poses and expressions, apply consistent styling, build an illustration library, and publish a mascot guide.
Measured Impact: +5% CTR, +4.7% homepage conversion, 40% faster production, 90% internal adoption.
Window: 6-week A/B across paid and homepage variants. CTR, ad clicks. Conversion, homepage signup rate.
Project Goal
In 2021, we set out to evolve Ghostie from a static logo-derived icon into a flexible brand ambassador that could scale across campaigns.
-
Improve storytelling impact across campaigns
-
Support higher marketing performance
-
Unify the brand’s visual identity across digital and offline surfaces
-
Scale efficiently across multiple departments and use cases
Research Approach
Visual Diagnosis – We audited all instances where Ghostie appeared across marketing, product, and social surfaces. This helped us map inconsistencies in style, color, emotional expression, and context.
Style Exploration – Based on audit findings, we explored multiple illustrative treatments. These included variations in line style, color depth, facial expression, and the use of accessories or environments.
Iterative Testing – Exploratory assets were piloted in small Google Ads sets and controlled homepage variants to gauge lift and relatability.
Identified Design Pain Points
1. Minimal versatility:
Original Ghostie was based directly on the logo icon, offering limited flexibility for pose or expression changes.
Effect: limited poses and expressions made it harder to match campaign narratives.
2. Flat and inconsistent rendering:
Assets lacked depth, with shading and perspective often missing or mismatched.
Effect: assets looked dated in premium contexts and reduced perceived quality.”
3. Limited emotional range:
Ghostie had limited expressions, making it unfit for storytelling or theme-specific messaging.
Effect: fewer options for empathy, humor, and themed storytelling.”
4. Lack of systemization:
Every new Ghostie asset was created ad hoc, leading to visual drift across channels.
Effect: ad-hoc creation drove drift and slowed delivery.
5. No brand guidelines:
There was no centralized reference for using Ghostie, making collaboration across teams inconsistent and inefficient.
Effect: teams interpreted Ghostie differently, making collaboration inconsistent.
Results
Post-launch results over a 6-week A/B and controlled pilots:
-
+5.2% uplift in campaign click through rate, following the introduction of the new Ghostie assets in seasonal campaigns and landing pages
-
+4.7% increase in homepage conversion rate, on A/B-tested variants using the updated Ghostie and supporting illustrations
-
~40% reduction in production time, driven by reusable components, defined expressions, and a modular approach
-
Over 600 illustrated assets deployed across affiliate, social, product, and growth channels.
-
90% internal adoption, measured by asset request compliance within three months of rollout.
Definitions: CTR, ad click-through on Ghostie creatives; conversion, homepage signup rate; adoption, asset request compliance within three months.
Conclusion
Ghostie is more than a mascot. When designed right, it becomes a visual extension of the brand’s values, friendly, trustworthy, and human-centered.
This project helped CyberGhost elevate a beloved symbol into a scalable brand asset that resonates emotionally and performs operationally.
The redesigned Ghostie now reflects the maturity of the product, speaks to users more directly, and empowers internal teams to tell stronger, more consistent stories across every channel.
Implemented Solutions
Minimal versatility due to logo-based design
Impact: Ghostie could not adapt to campaign narratives or emotional themes
Solution: We redesigned Ghostie to retain brand familiarity while introducing modular components. The new base character featured dynamic body shapes and stylized accessories, enabling reuse across multiple formats.
Trade-off: we keep the core silhouette for recognition, while adding modular parts for range.
Modular Ghostie, dynamic body shapes and props for range.
Flat design and inconsistent shading
Impact: Assets lacked depth and looked outdated or amateurish in certain contexts
Solution: We introduced soft shading, consistent light direction, and shape contrast to add depth and cohesion. This improved visual cohesion and allowed assets to appear more premium and modern.
Limited emotional expression
Impact: Limited ability to support storytelling, humor, or empathy.
Solution: We added customizable eye shapes and subtle facial cues to express mood without overstepping brand simplicity. Poses were reworked to add relatability and motion.
Measure: more expression presets reduce custom work and speed creative approvals.
Expression presets and poses, faster story matching.
One-off illustrations
Impact: Time-consuming asset creation, with high inconsistency
Solution: We built a scalable illustration system including base poses, expressions, and themed props.
Effect: fewer bespoke requests, faster turnarounds, and consistent on-brand visuals.
Systemized library, reusable base poses and themed props.
No usage guidelines
Impact: Teams across the company used Ghostie inconsistently
Solution: We created a full Mascot Style Guide and rolled out an internal illustration library with categorized use cases. The guide ensures consistency and lets teams self-serve assets efficiently.
Mascot guide and library, consistent usage and self-serve access.