Character Style Guides
Consumer products companies produce character styleguides to interpret and extend their licensed properties. These guides work alongside brand guidelines and marketing programs, to ensure licensees maintain the character’s integrity and brand story, create compelling product and maximise revenue.
Brief
To support and refresh the brand and make it more relevant for today’s younger consumer Disney commissioned Scarlet Design to produce a comprehensive style guide which would act as a character art ‘bible’ for the Mickey & Friends franchise.
Process
Scarlet Design defined the guide format and contents, then led a partnership with the Disney team and artists to create new consumer-appropriate character poses and backgrounds to compliment the existing art. Each section contained valuable creative tools enabling licensees to create inspirational storytelling product for younger children, or dynamic designs for older children. The guide would also be utilised as a reference manual for artists to enable ease of access. To ensure it could be extended at a future date we collated the art into clearly actionable themed sections.
Result
Following the highly successful launch of the ‘Absolutely Mickey’ guide, it was utilised by licensees worldwide to create innovative merchandise across multiple categories. Disney commissioned a major guide extension - Absolutely Mickey 2 - providing new artwork which incorporated design trends and seasonal themes.
To support and refresh the brand and make it more relevant for today’s younger consumer Disney commissioned Scarlet Design to produce a comprehensive style guide which would act as a character art ‘bible’ for the Mickey & Friends franchise.
Process
Scarlet Design defined the guide format and contents, then led a partnership with the Disney team and artists to create new consumer-appropriate character poses and backgrounds to compliment the existing art. Each section contained valuable creative tools enabling licensees to create inspirational storytelling product for younger children, or dynamic designs for older children. The guide would also be utilised as a reference manual for artists to enable ease of access. To ensure it could be extended at a future date we collated the art into clearly actionable themed sections.
Result
Following the highly successful launch of the ‘Absolutely Mickey’ guide, it was utilised by licensees worldwide to create innovative merchandise across multiple categories. Disney commissioned a major guide extension - Absolutely Mickey 2 - providing new artwork which incorporated design trends and seasonal themes.