The OMG Friends!®
The OMG Friends!® are a family of characters, brand, & product-line that I have created & had manufactured. "OMG" stands for "Oh My Goodness," which is the first thing that pops out of most people's mouth when they first encounter the pocket-sized adventure plushes. "Friends" was used to communicate an important piece of what the brand & characters stand for.
The OMG Friends are born explorers, love making new friends, & their favorite means of transportation are pockets (which they ride around in frequently).
Each character's personality represents a piece of what makes us human, & things that give our lives meaning. Things like courage, curiosity, wonder, love, generosity, the pursuit of knowledge, appreciation of beauty & aesthetics, a passion for life & adventure, or simple things like good hugs.
Through the process of developing this product line, brand, & the business associated with this sort of endeavor, I have tremendously increased the value I bring to the table for my design clients. I have an intimate understanding of what it means to run & develop a small business, & where design fits into the overall execution of business plans & considerations.
Being on the other side of the table (where I've been in the position of hiring designers & other contractors) has given me tremendous insight into the role I play as a designer with my clients. Developing a business & series of products from the perspective of a designer has also been an amazing experience. It's one I hope all designers get to experience in some capacity.
This is a pretty comprehensive (& cute) collection of work. What follows are samples of finished designs, as well as some insights into my creative, design, & problem-solving processes.
In this project you'll see:
- Logo & Branding Design
- Web Design
- Print Design
- Product Design
- Photography
- Illustration
- How I see the world & think
Enjoy. :)
Logo:
The OMG Friends logo was designed to embody the delight & excitement that customers often experience when first encountering the product line. A custom typeface was created for the word "friends" to lend a friendly & handmade feel to the logo, which is consistent with the plush product line & the brand's overall aesthetic.
An Introduction:
Allow me to introduce you to Sgt. Peepers the Owl, Butterscotch the Bunny, & Truffles the Pig.
Meet Sgt. Archibald Alexander Arugula Butterbiscuit Peepers Esquire... the 2nd
Sgt. Peepers is a seasoned world-traveler, whose favorite means of transportation is riding in pockets.
His hobbies include: bug & bottlecap collecting, travel, & trying new things (including foods like snails in cheese sauce, & peanut butter & moth smoothies).
Meet Benjamin Butterscotch Squishybiscuits:
Butterscotch enjoys sharing, candlelit cabbages, & long walks along produce departments.
His hobbies include: gardening, romance, doing kind things for others, eating, & listening to music (his favorite band is LCD Soundsystem).
Meet Lauren Truffles Butterbean:
Truffles loves warm socks, pancakes, books about quantum mechanics, & going to the library.
Her hobbies include: cooking, perfecting her pancake recipes, reading books about science & physics, visiting the library, programming (primarily in C++), & eating french fries.
Business Cards:
This is my business card. Some contact info changed while I still had quite a few cards, so I designed a rubber stamp to cross out the old & fill in the new.
Scoutbook Adventure Journals:
I love finding old journals & seeing what a period of my life was about. That is what inspired the idea for these.
These adventure journals feature 32 blank interior pages, which are perfect for recording an epic chapter of life.
Postcards:
These are some postcards! They are cute.
The back of the postcards feature facts about the character on the front, as well as a li'l critter-butt graphic for stamp placement.
Here we find Butterscotch keeping up on his correspondence with kids around the world.
Website:
The OMG Friends website was designed to have a very simple & straightforward navigation: visitors want to shop, & they want to see what the critters have been up to. Additional options & information are accessible in the footer of the site, keeping the main navigation very direct.
The aesthetic of the site uses soft colors & cozy imagery (e.g. puffy clouds, a picket fence, rolling hills, etc.), offset by richly colored photography. It also draws from scrapbook imagery, like photo-corners & snazzy ribbon-banners.
Home Page
The home page prominently features an image slideshow, as well as other nuggets that feature product-offers, interesting OMG Friends updates, projects, & initiatives.
Shoppe
This is the shoppe. It's where you bring cute things into your life.
Product Detail Page:
This is the product detail page. A cute Easter-egg I added to the site are the verification messages that you get when you add an item to your cart.
A few of my favorites are:
- "Ooooh! Look at you gettin' all click-y with the buttons! The item has been added to your cart!"
- "Whoa! That “Add to Cart” button totally works! The item has been added to your cart!"
- "The item has been added to your cart! May 47 bunnies dressed in tiny tuxedos bring you delicious pancakes for all eternity!"
- "Great news! The item has been added to your cart! You're the soon-to-be proud owner of that thing you're buying!"
- "The item has been added to your cart! May 1,000 kittens throw you a celebratory parade!"
Blog
This is the blog! It's where blog posts are posted! That's me holding a box! :D
Shipping Materials & Packaging:
This is how the OMG Friends travel to meet their new friends. I hand-stamp each box & handwrite all of the shipping info. It's the little things.
Halloween Mask Activity Sheets:
This is a crafting activity for fans to do with their OMG Friends plushes.
I started the design process by creating rows of blank mask-shapes, which I printed & used for sketching character/creature ideas.
From there I scanned the sketches, brought them into Illustrator, finalized the selected designs, & incorporated them into an activity sheet. These sheets are being featured alongside the plush products in retail shops.
A downloadable version is available for free on the OMG Friends' website.
Here are the OMG Friends wearing a few of their finished masks (they love dressing up).
Retail Display Box:
The OMG Friends retail display-box was sourced from a Canadian apple-box manufacturer. These boxes give the critters a place to live in retail shops, & remind shop owners to restock when the box gets a little empty.
Anouk Marie
This is Anouk Marie. She's a French fox from Montreal, BC. She & Butterscotch are super in love. She's one of several new characters, but the only one you get to see right now. ;)
Work In Progress: Activity Book
The following are sketches for the upcoming OMG Friends activity book.
Map Activity:
These are sketches for a map activity. The finished page will have a small illustration in the corner showing where Sgt. Peepers is starting from, & the activity-doer decides where they want to go from there & finishes the map (so they don't get lost on their way).
Coloring Accessories:
These are a few of the OMG Friends' favorite things to travel with. Kids can color the items & cut them out for fun play accessories.
Anouk Marie's Instruments:
Some of her favorite instruments include her guitar, semi-modular synthesizer, Awesome-izer effects pedal, rubber ducky & hammer, & a gong... accompanied by a carton of eggs for throwing at said gong.
Here are some of the finished vector instruments.
Miscellaneous Activity Thumbnails:
Thumbnails of various activity book pages, including: Style Truffles' Hair, Beekeeper Butterscotch & His Bees, Sgt. Peepers' Bug Collection, & etc.
Sgt. Peepers' Bug Collection:
Sgt. Peepers collects bugs, which is kinda problematic because he also eats bugs, & frequently eats his collection. Ketchup is his favorite condiment.
These are some of my favorite specimens from his collection:
Work In Progress: Promotional Coloring Placemat
These are promotional activity-placemats for kid-friendly restaurants to give to their wee patrons. The brand narrative & character personalities are communicated through the activities, & each placemat features a coupon for a plush 3-pack. These are intended to increase brand awareness, customer engagement, inspire imagination & creativity, & help tell the story of the OMG Friends.
Character Design:
Here's a peek into my process of taking a character idea from rough-sketch, to computer illustration, to a refined hand-sketch (then potentially back into the computer to become a finalized digital illustration). This flow from pen-&-paper to computer & back again results in a finished piece that has a lot of personality & life.
Below is a series of sketches on tracing paper made from a digital illustration (which was initially made from a hand-drawing).
I'm pretty sure that Sgt. Peepers in the bottom-right corner has a bucket of chicken.
Product Photography:
The following are examples of my product photography.
Equipment Used:
- Canon EOS 5D
- Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.4
- Canon EF 35mm f/2
- Canon Speedlight 580EX II
- Apple Aperture
- Canon EOS 5D
- Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.4
- Canon EF 35mm f/2
- Canon Speedlight 580EX II
- Apple Aperture
Sketching Before Shooting:
The following thumbnails show the planning involved in some of the photos featured below.
Sketches are for the following photos:
- Truffles In Her Element
- Valentine Truffles
- Party!
- Tea Party
Sgt. Peepers: In His Element
Butterscotch: In His Element
Truffles: In Her Element
Valentine Truffles
Party!
Tea Party!
More Fun Than A Barrel Full Of Fun
Holiday Friends
Mischievous Bunny
Friends Indeed™ Initiative: Doernbecher Children's Hospital
Contributing to the amount of joy, whimsy, & delight in the world is very important to me, & the OMG Friends have helped me in this effort. I was able to donate a couple hundred OMG Friends to the Doernbecher Children's Hospital on Christmas Eve of 2012. I received the note below a few weeks later.
Friends Indeed™ Initiative: Ghana
I had the opportunity to send OMG Friends with a woman who was volunteering at an orphanage in Ghana. I received these photos of them playing with children quite a long way from home. Pretty amazing.
