For legal reasons somewhat unbeknownst to me, we can’t just use any old meme—specifically, those that use copyrighted images. From Drake to Mr. Incredible, reappropriation of intellectual property is how most memes are made. To research nonspecific memes, I went straight to the source(s) of all things meme: knowyourmeme.com and Reddit, of course. And Google Images.

Then, I broke down memes like the Drake one into their very essence. What makes it a meme? Well, it’s just a picture and caption of a bad thing, and then a picture and caption of a bad thing. Boom, now it’s made into a template. I created a total of nine templates, like the acrostic meme and a fake iMessage screenshot.

Next was creating a design system for multiple designers to be able to quickly create from these templates. Each template included drag-and-drop image placeholders and custom Photoshop actions. This allowed us to keep up with live-time user submissions. (And I even wrote some of the memes myself.)