Meet the new Tify: how we redesigned Accentify’s chameleon
People have described Tify as a gecko, a frog and, more generally, a lizard. She’s a chameleon, so we clearly had some work to do on making that recognisable.
We liked her bright greens, blue tail and friendly face. Those were worth keeping. But a closer look revealed problems with her anatomy and some awkward details, including a tail that appeared to merge into itself.
That started a redesign which involved several very different-looking Tifys, a return to black and white, and quite a lot of attention to her paws. Here’s how we arrived at the new design, then gave her a much wider range of expressions.
Tify’s final Welcome pose, built from flat shapes in her green and blue palette.
Why a chameleon for an accent app?
Accentify began with actors in mind. An actor might work on General American for an audition, then prepare a completely different voice for the next role. That means listening closely to sounds, rhythm and the way someone speaks in a particular setting.
A chameleon made sense to us because we associated her with adaptability and change. Tify represents the freedom to explore different ways of speaking and develop an accent that feels convincing for the character or situation you’re working on.
Accentify has since grown beyond its acting origins. We want people learning an accent out of curiosity, for their own communication or simply because they enjoy it to feel welcome too. Tify needed to be relatable to that wider audience, with a playful personality that could make trying something unfamiliar feel more approachable.
What needed to change about the original Tify?
The original had plenty of appeal. Her large eyes and open smile made her approachable, and the green and blue were already part of Accentify’s identity.
Up close, though, the construction wasn’t consistent. The curled tail had areas where separate parts seemed to join together. Some paw shapes were difficult to read, and the eyes looked more like large cartoon eyeballs than the distinctive structures you see on a chameleon.
The shaded surface added another problem. Scales, highlights and small colour changes gave her a detailed, almost 3D appearance. At the size she appears in a lesson, much of that detail became difficult to see.
Chameleons are lizards, of course. The issue was that Tify’s more specific identity wasn’t clear enough. We wanted people to recognise a chameleon without needing her name or a description beside her.
The original Tify, with shaded scales, large eyes and a tightly curled tail.
Some early directions looked very different
One exploration made her more upright, with a teal body, a green belly and longer limbs. It gave us more room for gestures, but the heavy thighs and standing posture made her look rather like a kangaroo. Her curled tail and eyes weren’t enough to correct that impression.
An upright teal exploration. The longer limbs and heavier thighs changed the animal’s overall appearance.
We also tried much larger heads on smaller bodies. That made the face prominent, which was useful for expressions, but it exposed another difficulty. A broad head with round eyes could still look frog-like. Adding more rings around the eyes or making the crest taller could make her busier without making her more recognisably a chameleon.
A larger head made the face prominent, but the broad shape still suggested a frog.
Another large-head study, with more pronounced eye surrounds and a taller crest.
Those versions helped us work out which features mattered. Head size alone wouldn’t solve it. We needed the head, eyes, body and tail to make sense together, with enough space around each shape to read clearly.
We also looked at Duolingo’s design writing, including Building Character and Reshaping Duo. Their discussions of simple construction and silhouette were useful references while we worked on Tify’s own proportions and features.
Looking properly at chameleons
We went back to the animal itself. Which features would help someone recognise a chameleon once we removed the surface detail?
The eyes were especially useful. A real chameleon’s eyes sit within raised, cone-shaped lids, often described as eye turrets. Each has a small opening, and the eyes can move independently. San Diego Zoo’s chameleon guide explains these features, along with their unusual feet and gripping tails.
Tify keeps the raised outer eye shapes, simplified into rounded forms. Her visible whites and large pupils are a deliberate cartoon choice: they give us room to show where she’s looking and how she feels. We wanted the underlying structure to suggest a chameleon while allowing an expressive face.
Then there were the feet. Chameleons have five toes on each foot, grouped into opposing bundles of two and three. Their grasping shape is very different from a small human hand or a set of spread-out gecko toes.
Drawing every toe would have added a lot of tiny detail. We simplified the opposing groups into rounded, split paw shapes. The division and gripping gesture mattered more at this scale than showing five individual digits.
The curled tail and raised head crest helped complete the design. We kept both recognisable, while reducing the extra edges and panels around them. These decisions gave us a more consistent starting point for the illustrations.
Why we worked in black and white
Colour can make an unresolved design look more convincing than it is. Tify’s green and blue were familiar, but we needed to judge her proportions without relying on them.
We explored monochrome versions to look at the outline, the size of her head and the spaces between her paws, body and tail. That made it easier to see when a head was too broad, a body too squat or a curl too dominant.
A monochrome study with connected limbs and a three-quarter view.
A front-facing monochrome study exploring simpler shapes and detached paws.
The monochrome stage didn’t immediately solve everything. Some versions still looked frog-like; others had more complicated limbs than we needed. It did make those problems easier to identify and compare.
Once the shapes were working together, we returned to the richer green palette. Cyan stayed in the tail, navy gave the pupils and mouth definition, and a pale green chest kept the centre of the body simple. The upright teal direction helped confirm that we preferred green to remain her main colour.
From shaded artwork to flat vector shapes
We reviewed shaded versions too, including the one below. Smoothing the surface could tidy the appearance, but we still needed a design that would be straightforward to adjust across many poses and sizes.
A shaded version reviewed before we settled on the final flat construction.
For the final artwork, we chose flat areas of colour and editable vector shapes. The head, eye surrounds, chest, mouth, paws and tail could each be adjusted directly, with the same colours used consistently throughout.
A quick distinction helps here: PNG is a file format, and a PNG can contain either a flat illustration or shaded, 3D-looking artwork. Our decision was to use flat vector masters for the construction, then export transparent PNGs where they were useful.
SVG artwork scales without becoming pixelated. It also lets us adjust a particular curve or shape in the source. That was useful when a neck join needed smoothing or a mouth detail needed moving, because we could make a precise correction.
The approved baseline, its solid-fill vector reconstruction and an overlaid contour comparison.
Flattening the artwork also meant choosing which details to remove. Individual scales, glossy reflections and small shadow patches went. The raised eye shapes, head crest, split paws and striped curl stayed.
The paws and tail needed particular care
The tail had to be easy to follow from the body to the tip. We rebuilt it as a continuous, tapering curl, with clear space inside the spiral. The two cyan bands follow the curve, and the tip stays green.
That clear construction matters when the pose changes. A wider celebration curl and a tighter, nervous curl still need to attach naturally to the same body. The bands need to follow the tail, and nearby paws need enough clearance to avoid accidentally merging with it.
We chose floating paws and feet for the final style. The small gaps let Tify wave, cup a paw or lift her feet without adding long arms and legs around an already expressive head and tail.
Their placement still needs to feel connected to the gesture. A paw held near her cheek means something different from one held low beside her body. A foot angled inward changes the posture. A gap that is too small can make two shapes look accidentally joined.
The result is deliberately stylised. Real chameleons have connected limbs, much smaller eye openings and different proportions. The biological research helped us choose recognisable features; the illustration still needed to work as Tify.
Making accent practice feel more approachable
Recording yourself trying an unfamiliar accent can feel a little uncomfortable. You’re concentrating on new sounds, listening back to your voice and deciding what to try again. We wanted Tify to feel like a friendly presence during that process.
That influenced the design as much as the anatomy did. Her rounded shapes and expressive face needed to feel welcoming. Her smaller forms needed to stay readable on a phone. And her poses needed to give us ways to show attention, encouragement and enjoyment throughout practice.
Playfulness matters to us because learning an accent involves repetition. We want the experience to feel enjoyable enough that people are happy to return, experiment and have another go. Tify’s character is one part of that aim, alongside the lessons and feedback.
Checking her inside a lesson
The lesson comparison was an especially useful check. A large character image gives you plenty of room to see every detail. In a lesson, Tify has to sit comfortably beside the recording controls, instruction and word you’re practising.
We placed the new design into a real British RP Listen and Repeat screen using the word LEAN. Keeping the mascot at the same height and preserving the surrounding interface made the change easier to judge.
A development placement study using the same British RP lesson screen and mascot height: original artwork on the left, redesign candidate on the right.
The flatter shapes were clearer to us in that setting. The eyes, smile and tail remained visible without all the smaller surface details of the original.
Giving Tify more expressions
Once we were happy with the base design, we developed five full poses: Welcome, Listening, Celebrating, Encouraging and Wonder. We also kept three additional facial expressions in the Welcome pose.
The five base poses: Welcome, Listening, Celebrating, Encouraging and Wonder.
Changing the mouth alone gave us too little variety. Listening needed a more attentive posture and a cupped paw. Celebrating needed lifted paws, different feet and a broader curl. Encouraging worked better with a gentle lean and softer gestures.
We then added eleven more poses, developing and reviewing each one individually: Crying, Livid, Shocked, Cheeky, Flirty, Suspicious, Drama Queen, Snobby, Crazy, Terrified and Shy. Each has a matching compact head.
The eleven additional emotional poses, developed and reviewed individually.
Some of the differences are small but quite specific. Shocked has a large open mouth and raised paws. Terrified has a tense grimace, defensive paws and a tighter tail. Shy tucks her head, lowers her gaze and brings her paws together. Snobby raises her head and adds a dismissive gesture.
We wanted enough exaggeration to make the feeling visible while keeping the same character underneath it.
The gentler poses give us ways to support the learning experience, while Cheeky, Snobby and Drama Queen let us explore more of her personality in Accentify’s wider communications. We wanted a character people could recognise and enjoy across different situations, with the same approachable design throughout.
The small corrections mattered
The last part involved reviewing the details again. In one Celebrating version, the tilted head created an awkward notch at the neck and an abrupt chest join. Those curves needed correcting while preserving the lifted pose.
Cheeky’s tongue initially sat too high against the teeth. We lowered it so the mouth made sense. Terrified briefly had separate eyebrows, which introduced a feature we hadn’t established elsewhere. We removed them and kept the expression in her existing eyes and mouth.
Tify now has five base poses and eleven additional emotional poses, with a consistent set of shapes and colours. Course-specific versions with flag-coloured tails are planned next.
If you’d like to try an accent yourself, download Accentify and choose the one you want to explore.