What makes a good mascot design

The new generation of character designers is born out of the avant-garde style of modern artists unlike most designers that come forward because of business needs of the marketing world. Thinking along those lines, a designer catering to the demand of the marketing world would consider certain requirements in an efficient mascot. Most character designers would ideally settle for a mascot that is flexible to adapt, and looks good in every medium while performing tasks and displaying emotions.

The perfect ingredient for a top of the line character design is its lively attribute. Designers often find it challenging to display emotions with a rather simple mascot. In this regard, some designers are abstract in their approach while others are precise and methodical. We have identified a pattern on how some of these designers educated the viewers with their designs. Super Mario is probably the best mascot to describe how pixelated character design introduces gameplay.

An easily recognizable mascot serves as a case study for students of character animation and a reminder for established artists about the importance of character development within the plot of the game. Despite being pixelated, the mascot remains recognizable and takes every one through its story with absolute charm. Can you recall any recent pixelated mascot? Image Source: pixilart. A shallow person can set anyone off. Something similar is true for a shallow mascot. Hence, adding depth is inevitable.

Remember team mascots, especially for the teams whose names are based on real animals or creatures that could potentially get human-like characteristics. Team mascots could be presented not only with images of animals or people but also specially made fantastic creatures and have been highly effective to promote teams and grow their recognizability.

One more example is well-known mascots of the Olympic Games designed specifically for every event with the visual features of the host country.

In sports, mascots are not only a matter of uniting and support. They are also a huge business with all that merchandising stuff people buy to keep memories about events and mark their support to the team, country, or even a particular person.

Another area that caught this approach is educational institutions that use mascots to build up strong branding. Official mascots of the Olympic Games in Tokyo No wonder, with all that power, mascots got highly popular in marketing and advertising, much before it moved to the web. They won the attention of customers diversely, from small badges to live costumed characters able to physically communicate with people. Today, mascots are also broadly applied widely in digital products for web and mobile.

Mascot design process for Saily App. Mascot becomes a good interconnector between the user and the product. In interfaces, it can serve well as a basic element of communication and interaction. Just changing its appearance for example, mood, outfit, activities, etc. Mascots can communicate directly with the speech bubbles, provide visual prompts with various facial expressions, reflect the mood of the user with different graphic variations of the mascot, provide helpful instructions in an app onboarding tutorial , and congratulate with the achievements.

The business practice of successful companies shows that a well-crafted mascot can work even more effectively than product endorsement with the help of a famous person. Mascots can reflect any traits of character, any style needed for product positioning, and communicate via a diverse set of visuals.

They broaden the horizons of personification. With mascots, designers and marketing specialists can create unexpected and catchy looks or make fantastic characters alive. Most of us are visually driven and our brains work in such a way that we notice images faster and remember them better than text. Being images far from abstract and having human-like features, mascots tend to take everything from the abilities of human memory : we catch them fast, easily remember them due to particular associations and recognize them faster than abstract images seeing them again.

All the mentioned has great importance in creating strong brand awareness and building patterns in user interfaces. Mascots present wide opportunities for the visual marking of different carriers of identity, website pages, or app screens. Mascots can be used in logos , interface illustrations , hero banners, chatbots, stickers, various swag, and branded merch. As we integrated Ollie into visuals, we continued to hone the styling of his body, limbs and expressions.

Through some scribble discussions in the team, we turned him into an 'O', obviously relevant to Optus and giving him greater reason to exist. The counter of the 'O' became his face, and soon after the realisation that this and his eyes were all that we needed to build his expressions, his mouth disappeared. After the presentation to the client, where Ollie was approved almost immediately, we took it upon ourselves to make sure he was drawn correctly and his character developed.

We had our lead designer spend a few days exploring as many iterations as possible and then built a brief for the next step. We commissioned three illustrators to take two days each and see where they could take him and improve him. We reviewed the work, gave feedback, and ultimately settled with one illustrator, Marco Palmieri, who understood what was great about our character, but also what could be improved.

We handed over 50 per cent responsibility for Ollie's personality, and that ownership meant Ollie could grow and develop naturally, through the eyes of a character specialist. Knowing the purpose of your mascot guides you in how the mascot will connect with the world. Often, mascots are great for brand recognition and branding material. Maybe your mascot provides help.

Think of ways your mascot could be helpful to your audience or users. One of our favorite mascot projects landed on our desk from Launch Indy. Launch Indy is a coworking space in the heart of Indianapolis. For their grand opening, they wanted to bring the community together to see the new space and get to know the Launch team. They needed a mascot to help promote their community event. The idea was to introduce Launch Indy to the community with a friendly H. Teams came together to participate in a few rounds of basketball, got to know the space, and became familiar with the Launch brand.

For the mascot, we brought in the colors from the Launch logo treatment.