Meet Mrs. Green.
I work with agencies both big and small and a local firm Design Point Inc. approached me about creating a character for one of their clients called "Mrs. Green."
I love doing character design. Creating an illustrative persona can be challenging since it'll be directly related to a company or product in the eyes of the public.
I was provided a list of characteristics the firm said needed to be reflected in Mrs. Green. When I first read them I couldn't help myself and laughed because I knew it was an unfiltered client wish list for the character. But that said it wasn't impossible, it was just an interesting mix of attributes pinpoined by their client.
- She needs to be a hip Mom (Not Betty Crocker)
- She needs to have a nice friendly smile
- Have her wearing Sarah Palin glasses
- Red hair like Ariel from the "Little Mermaid" (No I'm not kidding)
- Have her wearing a light green shirt
Pruning Mrs. Green.
I think we went through a total of four rounds making subtle changes to body language, hand position, frame thickness on glasses etc.
Final Mrs. Green brand created by Design Point Inc.
This shows the final branded mark the agency put together using my character art. It remains to be seen if she becomes as well known as other product characters like Mrs. Buttersworth, or The Pillsbury Doughboy, but word of mouth on the grocery shelves is that Mr. Clean has taken a shine to her, so her future looks promising.
8 comments:
Great post Von... I really enjoy reading/learning about the reasons behind why one design or element ends up working and another doesn't. Tell me -- are the three straight fingers in the final version a subtle nod to the 3 R's of being "green" (reduce, reuse, recycle)??? Or did they just not want a character that was pointing?
What a great character!
I love the character Von, she encompasses everything they were looking for. I could definitely see her working for many different products.
I love it, though the three fingers thing kinda freaks me out, especially when juxtaposed with the earlier four-fingered mock-ups.
I'm confused why another agency handled the type - why weren't they just hired to do the illustration too - or, why weren't you hired to do the whole thing?
That's awesome Von! That's me [in a few years I think ..lol]. Love the Ariel hair, very hard to pull off on a real person though :-)
The pinky is bent. It's 4 fingers, 5 fingers with the thumb. She's not missing anything.
I just find it awful that they would put the elbow in between the "e"s..
What were they thinking?
Like others this is also damn interesting…I could definitely see her working for many different products.
Cool Life
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