Getting to develop Leif, a company mascot was a huge honor and such an incredible process. Seeing this project come to life will always be a highlight in my career.
I had a lot of freedom in this project and went through many iterations of this expressive pilea plant that has since taken on a life of their own.
We went through a few ideas on what kind of mascot we want. There were so many directions to take this! We could have a group of mascots, we could have mascots that relate to blog niches, mascots that were human, mascots that were objects.
After a few meetings on what type of mascot we felt was right for the company, we determined that plants have been something that the company has always resonated with. It was time for sketching!
I had so much fun with these. I was able to explore how expressive the leaves of the plant could be as well as the facial expressions that would later be used in the company Slack workspace.
So we narrowed down what we wanted the subject of the mascot to be. A pilea plant! That didn’t really narrow down how we want this character to present. How many leaves? Did we want the eyes to be on the pot? On a single leaf? On two separate leaves? The possibilities still felt endless.
Some iterations definitely were better than others, but I wanted to take it too far to see what the limits were. Some of the things on my Illustrator artboard were a little terrifying, but it’s all part of the process!
I wanted to present a variety to the stakeholders, but still show options that I would want to work with and expand out as a mascot. Nothing is better for visualization than actually showing examples of each character in action so I built each of these four characters out a bit to make the decision process easier!
Here we are! A final mascot design that has sort of evolved to have a personality of their own over time. Soon, people in our workspace were debating on what kind of coffee they drink and what their voice sounds like.
In 2021, I did the branding for our all-hands retreat and one of the main pieces of swag was a dye sublimated beach towel. I had a lot of creative freedom on this one.
A main event at the retreat was a sandcastle building contest with professional sandcastle creators as our mentors, so I knew that had to be part of the design! This was also the first time Leif was being put on a physical item.
This next part is one of the reasons this project will always make me excited to talk about it. We got to adapt Leif’s design into A PLUSHIE. I will never get over this!
They were sent out to all the employees at the company, as well as every event the marketing team went to as decor and a giveaway item. Immediately after receiving them, the pictures started pouring in.
As part of the new hire welcome package, we wanted to create something of Leif that was more easily able to ship. One of the co-founders really likes vinyl keychains which is what we went with!
