01 — The Brief
Be in a group without being yourself.
Facebook Groups had a Reddit problem. The most active communities — buy-nothing, new-parent, fan and hobby groups — run on people who don't necessarily want their full name and profile photo on every post.
Nicknames is the fix: pick a handle, pick a picture, pick a background color, and your real profile stays private to everyone but the group's admins. The creative brief was the picture — a library of avatars big enough that any member finds one that feels like them, tight enough to read as a single Facebook system.
02 — The Through-line
Everyone wears sunglasses.
One detail holds the whole set together: a pair of black sunglasses on every character. It does two jobs — it nods to Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, and it echoes the glasses already used in the Groups anonymity icon, so a masked avatar and the “anonymous” affordance speak the same language.
Under the glasses: a warm, dimensional, toy-like render — animals, fruit, plants, one light source, no faces of real people. We tested flatter vector directions first; the 3D look won because it holds detail at 40 px and still feels friendly at poster size.
As creative lead I set the direction the generation ran on — render style, the sunglasses rule, the subject list, framing and crop, and what to reject — and aligned the brand team with cross-functional partners across product design, engineering and UXR. Meta's ImagineFlow produced the volume; Procreate, Photoshop and Figma did the shaping, cleanup and final assembly. Two thousand-plus avatars in, the set was culled to the roughly 109 that shipped in the picker.
Subjects, not selfies
Animals, produce, plants — nothing that reads as a specific person, so it works as an identity for anyone.
Legible at 40 px
Big shapes, one light source, high contrast — so a character survives a crowded comment thread.
One accessory, always
Swap the creature, keep the frame. The sunglasses are the constant that makes 109 one-offs a family.
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Avatars generated from the direction
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Made the final picker
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Concept to shipped set
Nicknames rolled out to Facebook Groups worldwide in November 2025. TechCrunch and Engadget both led with the sunglasses. The set is live in the product now — pick a handle, pick a creature, keep your face to yourself.
