Noa Ellery. Art director at Cartoon Avatars.
Checks every avatar we deliver against the house style, and has since our first order in May 2020. Writes down what that desk teaches us.
Where the notes come from. The desk every avatar crosses.
Noa Ellery is the art director at Cartoon Avatars. Every avatar we deliver passes Noa's desk first, checked against the one house reference that keeps a whole team matching, so the fortieth person hired looks like they belong beside the first.
Noa has worked on the studio's drawings since our first order in May 2020, for accountancies, fractional CFO firms, tech companies, game studios, landscaping companies and pharmacies among many others. Some teams send one person. Some send a hundred and fifty.
That desk is where the notes on this blog come from. Which photos draw well and which fail. Why a team page drifts apart one hire at a time. What people who would rather not be photographed actually worry about. Noa writes it down so the next team gets it right the first time.
The studio's record
- avatars drawn by hand since May 2020
- 3,170
- avatars drawn by hand since May 2020
- orders delivered
- 1,467
- orders delivered
- countries our customers work in
- 55
- countries our customers work in
- people in our largest single team order
- 150
- people in our largest single team order
From our order records, May 2020 to August 2026.
What Noa writes about. The questions teams ask us most.
- Keeping a team matchingOne style for every person, including the ones not hired yet.
- Photos that draw wellWhat makes a phone or Slack photo usable, and what does not.
- Team pages and profilesWebsites, email signatures, directories, LinkedIn and badges.
- People who would rather not posePrivacy, consent and a page nobody has to opt out of.
How we write. Three rules every note keeps.
- Every figure about our own orders comes from our order records.
- We never name a customer without their written permission.
- When a note goes out of date, we correct it and change the date at the top.
Notes by Noa. 4 so far, newest first.
Your engineers do not want their faces on your careers page
A quarter of your team quietly dreads the photo day email. What they are worried about, and the fix that costs less than a photographer.
Noa ElleryPrivacy · 8 min read · 2 Sept 2026
We audited 40 remote team pages
34 of 40 team pages had a visible seam. Here is what the other six did differently, and why the seam rarely shows up where you'd expect.
Noa ElleryRemote work · 6 min read · 28 Aug 2026
One drawing style beats ten photographers
One photographer covers one room, once. A distributed team is never all in one room. Consistency is a supply problem before it is a style problem.
Noa ElleryBrand · 6 min read · 21 Aug 2026
A 30 person agency in one afternoon
A model for how a 30 person order moves from headcount to avatars, hour by hour, not a claim about any one client.
Noa ElleryCase study · 7 min read · 14 Aug 2026
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