Traditionally a mascot design meant a character design for a sports team mascot. It was separate from the school/university/sports team logo design. These days, a team’s mascot character is also used as the team logo. Then companies started using mascots or characters to represent them in trade events or in promotional campaigns. Now a days, some companies integrate a character into their logo design. Take the case of KFC logo design that contains a character design.

A mascot character can be used effectively in enhancing a company’s brand image. If the target market requires it, a mascot can be integrated into the logo design. When a character is integrated into a logo design, it makes the company appear, fun, inviting and trendy.

Depending the brand strategy and the target market, a company chooses the type of character that they want to use. Typically, animal characters are used, depending on the kind of message they want to give out and usually the kind of animal that would closely relate to their kind of business sector. Human characters are used when the business wants to signify the importance of people of the particular kind of character in their service.

We have created a number of mascot designs in the past for companies as well as schools and universities. Typically, clients come to us with a character already established and brand strategy thought out for its promotion. We then find out the characters that the mascot should exhibit and the attitude that we should bring out in the character.

One of our illustrators then sketches out a concept in pencil. This sketch would be based on a number of reference photos and a little bit of research into the characteristics of the animal in question. Some times, some typical characteristics are ignored when sketching the mascot to match the requirement of the client. For example. a grizzly bear is naturally aggressive and shy. However, we might create a grizzly bear character that looks cute and friendly.

We also work on creating clothes or other accessories on the character to match the message that the client wishes to express. These details are based on strict instructions from the client and we try not to be too creative in this aspect. Clothing and accessories on a mascot character should be in line with the brand message or the promotional requirement of the company.

When we show the client the initial pencil sketch concept of the mascot design, we usually end up making some changes and tweaking the design. In this phase, we often tweak the expressions of the character as per the clients instructions. The expressions have to be right and reflect the core message that the company is trying to broadcast.

Once the initial character sketch is approved, we move into the inking phase. Our illustrators then use black ink pens to ink the character building the outline. Once the inking is done, we scan and digitize the artwork. Digitizing involves tracing over the scanned sketch in Adobe Photoshop. Each line is built from scratch and traced over the lines of the artwork.

After the character sketch is digitized, we proceed to color the sketch in Photoshop. Colors are applied in layers, building the depth step by step. If a client specifically requests that the final output be in vector format (EPS or AI), then the coloring step becomes quite difficult and we often charge extra for this process. After applying the base colors and building the foundation, we start working on applying effects such as shadows and highlights to create depth and make the character really pop out.

The color version is shown to the client and any tweaks are applied to finalize the mascot character design. We then prepare the final image files formats which usually include the Photoshop PSD file, a high resolution JPG file and some times a BMP file format.

Check out the mascot design process with an example.