Microsoft Office Outlook - Memo Style
John Witchel Subject:
Design Treatment
Hi, We need a cartoon pig character designed for an upcoming website called Book Pig. In short, Book Pig is "NetFlix for Children's Books". We send a box of books, the child reads them, sends them back, we send more. We want to design not just a logo, but a cartoon character that is central to the design of the site and the packaging. Here's an early draft of one pig placed on our packaging… As you can see it's central. So the Pig has to pop. The following are a series of notes describing some of the ideas we want to achieve. In fact it's probably more than you'd ever want to know about pigs, logos and cartoons. :)
1) The pig is from the POV of the child (age 7-12) so it needs to feel somewhat child-like -- the body proportions and ears of the early design do that that but the eyes also need to do that 2) The pig needs to be warm and inviting. I can't stress this enough. The pig is my little friend, who I love and who loves me. He has to radiate welcoming. Everything else after that is secondary. 3) The pig is an avid reader so it makes sense that he has a book as part of his image, perhaps reading it looking up from his reading, under his arm, sticking out of a back pack. So here's my take on some other work… Twitter. This works really well. He's looking right at you and winking -- can't get more inviting than that. Plus he's cute as hell.
1
This is from one of my old companies. I had this designed and it was incredibly popular during its short life. A lot of the same ideas applied. I wanted a design that connected you directly to the gorilla (AKA Knuckles). He is looking right at you. In this case the target was an adult so he's in a suit and he was supposed to have a "I have a secret" look of confidence. But again, the design was intentionally warm and inviting.
Lilo and Stitch. The girl was incredibly expressive emotionally and this is a good example image. Her eyes were absolutely central to the character and could be used to easily express virtually any emotion. She looks like a child (in this case scared) but I thought the design of this character was a knock out.
Marvin. Not a great cartoon, but a great character design. Very few word in general -- Marvin communicated largely though his eyes -- they were big -- they could look anywhere easily, they scaled up and down. This is a great example of him covering 4 emotions in one comic. In particular look at frames two and three. Even though he's looking away, the reader is drawn into his face. We want the same effect. No matter what the pig is doing or where he is on the page we want the user drawn into him.
2
The pig has to scale down. Here's an example from "For better or worse", also an incredibly expressive comic but has trouble when scaled way down. In this example her eyes are so small we have to rely on her mouth to see what's she's feeling.
This is a good example of big expressive eyes that seems to have trouble expressing anything but a certain vacantness. The artist always has to use the dogs ears to express his moods. In this example they're looking all over the place but the only emotion that's expressed is in the last frame when the dog is expressing dread but he does it with the ears not the eyes.
3
The next two are all variations on the Doonesbury style . These are super expressive eyes but I don't think this style will work in this case so I would encourage you to stay away from this style.
Pumbaa from The Lion King. I suppose at some level you could think of the pig as the younger smarter brother of Pumbaa. I loved Pumbaa and thought he worked great as a character -- rich range of emotions. He has a tough time when his face is scaled way down because his horns are always in the way, but nevertheless his strong eyebrows work great to help capture the expressiveness -- big eyebrows might work well with our Pig.
4
Wilbur from Charlotte's Web (the original movie)
This is pretty good. But he looks too much like, well, a pig. You want to stay away from this. Keep him off four legs or doing anything pig-like.
Finally there's Chilly Willy. Imagine if Chilly Willy were a pig with a book in his hand.
Here's a couple of instances of bad designs to stay away from:
5
Search Monkey is too symbolic and abstract. I get it " a smart monkey" but it's not warm and inviting. It's literally a play on words.
Ask Jeeves was problematic because you couldn't do anything with him (he was always standing there, never doing anything). My hope is that we'll use the Pig for "how it works" cartoons, highlights, bullet points, whatever, so the image has to be flexible.
Gorilla Glue. Too literal. Book Pig should be a cartoon, it shouldn't look anything like a real pig (Chilly Willy doesn't look at all like a penguin.)
Below is an image of the website as it currently stands. Note the pig is quite small. This is basically final (I'll add a couple images of the book box and some quotes but not much more. Couple of other things to note: - The pig doesn’t pop. He's supposed to be the star of this page, the central visual idea, the access point into the whole concept. Right now he's not. He's beaten out by the main image. - Scaled down just about everything but the ears is lost. If you want to cut off his lower body and put him at a table or a shelf to make more room -- you can have the extra vertical inch in the gray bar but not more. - The way this is supposed to work in the readers mind is emotional response first, intellectual response second ("What's this? Book Pig? Ha-ha I like that, cute pig! Now what's this site about? NetFlix for Children's books? Oh I get it."). Instead the current design works in reverse: intellectual response first, emotional response second ("What's this site about? NetFlix for Children's books? I get it. Hmm. Book Pig? Oh a pig reading a book, hmm.") I believe great web designs elicit an emotional response first -- Yahoo! is the mother of all examples of this -- it's name is literally an emotion.
6
If I could sum up my feedback it's this: Design to Chilly Willy, Lilo and Twitter, make him look out at the reader, zoom in on his face. Good luck. -john
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Design Treatment
Hi, We need a cartoon pig character designed for an upcoming website called Book Pig. In short, Book Pig is "NetFlix for Children's Books". We send a box of books, the child reads them, sends them back, we send more. We want to design not just a logo, but a cartoon character that is central to the design of the site and the packaging. Here's an early draft of one pig placed on our packaging… As you can see it's central. So the Pig has to pop. The following are a series of notes describing some of the ideas we want to achieve. In fact it's probably more than you'd ever want to know about pigs, logos and cartoons. :)
1) The pig is from the POV of the child (age 7-12) so it needs to feel somewhat child-like -- the body proportions and ears of the early design do that that but the eyes also need to do that 2) The pig needs to be warm and inviting. I can't stress this enough. The pig is my little friend, who I love and who loves me. He has to radiate welcoming. Everything else after that is secondary. 3) The pig is an avid reader so it makes sense that he has a book as part of his image, perhaps reading it looking up from his reading, under his arm, sticking out of a back pack. So here's my take on some other work… Twitter. This works really well. He's looking right at you and winking -- can't get more inviting than that. Plus he's cute as hell.
1
This is from one of my old companies. I had this designed and it was incredibly popular during its short life. A lot of the same ideas applied. I wanted a design that connected you directly to the gorilla (AKA Knuckles). He is looking right at you. In this case the target was an adult so he's in a suit and he was supposed to have a "I have a secret" look of confidence. But again, the design was intentionally warm and inviting.
Lilo and Stitch. The girl was incredibly expressive emotionally and this is a good example image. Her eyes were absolutely central to the character and could be used to easily express virtually any emotion. She looks like a child (in this case scared) but I thought the design of this character was a knock out.
Marvin. Not a great cartoon, but a great character design. Very few word in general -- Marvin communicated largely though his eyes -- they were big -- they could look anywhere easily, they scaled up and down. This is a great example of him covering 4 emotions in one comic. In particular look at frames two and three. Even though he's looking away, the reader is drawn into his face. We want the same effect. No matter what the pig is doing or where he is on the page we want the user drawn into him.
2
The pig has to scale down. Here's an example from "For better or worse", also an incredibly expressive comic but has trouble when scaled way down. In this example her eyes are so small we have to rely on her mouth to see what's she's feeling.
This is a good example of big expressive eyes that seems to have trouble expressing anything but a certain vacantness. The artist always has to use the dogs ears to express his moods. In this example they're looking all over the place but the only emotion that's expressed is in the last frame when the dog is expressing dread but he does it with the ears not the eyes.
3
The next two are all variations on the Doonesbury style . These are super expressive eyes but I don't think this style will work in this case so I would encourage you to stay away from this style.
Pumbaa from The Lion King. I suppose at some level you could think of the pig as the younger smarter brother of Pumbaa. I loved Pumbaa and thought he worked great as a character -- rich range of emotions. He has a tough time when his face is scaled way down because his horns are always in the way, but nevertheless his strong eyebrows work great to help capture the expressiveness -- big eyebrows might work well with our Pig.
4
Wilbur from Charlotte's Web (the original movie)
This is pretty good. But he looks too much like, well, a pig. You want to stay away from this. Keep him off four legs or doing anything pig-like.
Finally there's Chilly Willy. Imagine if Chilly Willy were a pig with a book in his hand.
Here's a couple of instances of bad designs to stay away from:
5
Search Monkey is too symbolic and abstract. I get it " a smart monkey" but it's not warm and inviting. It's literally a play on words.
Ask Jeeves was problematic because you couldn't do anything with him (he was always standing there, never doing anything). My hope is that we'll use the Pig for "how it works" cartoons, highlights, bullet points, whatever, so the image has to be flexible.
Gorilla Glue. Too literal. Book Pig should be a cartoon, it shouldn't look anything like a real pig (Chilly Willy doesn't look at all like a penguin.)
Below is an image of the website as it currently stands. Note the pig is quite small. This is basically final (I'll add a couple images of the book box and some quotes but not much more. Couple of other things to note: - The pig doesn’t pop. He's supposed to be the star of this page, the central visual idea, the access point into the whole concept. Right now he's not. He's beaten out by the main image. - Scaled down just about everything but the ears is lost. If you want to cut off his lower body and put him at a table or a shelf to make more room -- you can have the extra vertical inch in the gray bar but not more. - The way this is supposed to work in the readers mind is emotional response first, intellectual response second ("What's this? Book Pig? Ha-ha I like that, cute pig! Now what's this site about? NetFlix for Children's books? Oh I get it."). Instead the current design works in reverse: intellectual response first, emotional response second ("What's this site about? NetFlix for Children's books? I get it. Hmm. Book Pig? Oh a pig reading a book, hmm.") I believe great web designs elicit an emotional response first -- Yahoo! is the mother of all examples of this -- it's name is literally an emotion.
6
If I could sum up my feedback it's this: Design to Chilly Willy, Lilo and Twitter, make him look out at the reader, zoom in on his face. Good luck. -john
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