Mascots are great, but..this one is so generic. No character depth.

Why would anybody care about it? What's the backstory of this character? Why is it a cat (?) It's so one dimensional. It's superficial.

Very forgettable.

This is a better (though very broad) 101: http://pixar-animation.weebly.com/character-design.html

More writing by John K: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/09/for-karen-what-makes-lasting-iconic.html

Cute, nice writeup, although in all honesty the first thing I thought was 'Octocat' - which sort of contradicts the point about being unique.

Then again they shouldn't have a monopoly of all things vector cat based.

There's just so much that defines a character, and so many places where it has been done before... you could even take hints from game design.

Learning from game designers

For example, in the "MOBA" genre, there are very specific guidelines for individual characters to look unique. While parts of those guidelines only come into play when you're designing 50 characters, other parts can help you set yours apart from competing brands.

As a practical example of that, you could look into making sure your character's silhouette is unique enough. This is a really simple method to make it more instantly recognisable.

Brand archetypes

Also, regarding finding your brand's personality: if you struggle getting people to think of your brand as personality, I recommend using brand archetypes. They can make it easier to assign traits (positive and negative) to your brand, and act upon it by incorporating said traits into your mascot design.

These archetypes take a grain of salt, but they're based on Jungian archetypes, and can hold significant value when attempting to get non-creative minds involved in the creation process.

Associated links

Some links to go with this post, since I'm terribly markdown-lazy today:

Definition of MOBAhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplayer_online_battle_arena

DotA2's (a moba) character art guide (highly recommended) http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf

Brand archetypeshttp://marketingideas101.com/idea-center/branding-idea-center/branding-101-12-brand-archetypes/

.edit: links, archetypes, typos, markup, etc

Great post, but if the mascot isn't cute or funny will it work?

My partners have been asking for me to come up with some mascot. We're a fantasy sports tech company, and I just can't see how any mascot will fit in with our brand.

Open to thoughts here.