Company Mascots

For decades company mascots have been used to represent otherwise dry or boring products and services. Using mascots to personify a company or offering transforms the mundane into something engaging and appealing for the intended target audience. One of the more recent successes is the famous “Geico gecko”. This little green lizard mascot with his cute design and easy British accent has provided an immeasurable amount of value to a company selling dry goods: insurance. How successful is this company mascot? Let’s just say it will take a long time before you ever see (or think of) a gecko and not associate with little insurance mascot. That’s a very powerful branding device indeed!  So what goes into successful company mascots? Let’s take a look!

Designing Company Mascots

First up, the design needs to be preceded by an idea. This can be a rough concept or a tight idea. Either way, your mascot designer will need to know what (if any) creative parameters will rule the project. A good mascot design company will provide you with a solid process to guide you through the design and execution phases.

Sketching the mascot

With the ideas settled on and a creative brief in place, the your mascot designers then begin to create concept sketches of your new company mascot. These sketches will display different points of view on what your company mascot should look like. This is where having multiple artists is very beneficial. If only one designer is working on your project then you are confined to one take, one perpective on what your mascot should look like. With multiple designers, you get many different creative points of view and ultimately, many different variations on your mascot to choose from. All companies do this differently, here at Fast Characters we (at the time of writing) provide a minimum of four artists and four concept sketches at the start of every project. Our clients love this because right out the gate, they have four very different ideas on what their company mascot could look like. Lets just say, our customers love having options to choose from and we’re happy to provide them!

How to tweak company mascots

It’s during this sketch phase that you will want to make changes. You might provide feedback like:

• “Make the mascot taller”
• “Have the eyes more friendly looking”
• “Adjust the claws of the mascot so they look more menacing!”
• “Make the hair style more like this photo…”

A good mascot design company will be happy to accommodate these requests during the sketch phase and provide you with the revisions you desire. We love the sketch phase of all our design projects because it allows our clients the freedom to explore every creative opportunity they wish.  Through these revisions and tweaks, you end up with the exact mascot your company wants!

Mascot colors

Once the final company mascot sketches are approved  is where the project really starts to come to life.  Seeing pencil sketches of company mascots is one thing, but seeing that sketch beautifully rendered in full color is something quite special.  This is where our clients get really excited because that “thing” that was just an idea in a meeting is now starting to look like a professionally designed character which embodies their brand.  Coloring a mascot is just as important as every other part of the design process.  Think of famous mascots and you will have strong color associations with them.  If I say “Ronald McDonald” or “the Michelin Man” or “Tony the Tiger” you will immediately see characters and colors.

Company mascots and branding

There’s nothing like a company mascot to strengthen a company brand. The mascot adds personality where there was none. It adds character and charm and most importantly, recognition and memorability. Professionally designed company mascots keep on giving year after year.  There is no better way to differentiate yourself from your competitors than with a great company mascot.