Description
The goal of the AHG Mascots is to create a public facing figure that aims to represent the department that can be translated into the environment–from signage, branding, and even merchandise.
Attributes
The mascots have their own identities. They allow people to not only love the mascots, but sympathize with them, to relate to them, and to consider them part of a larger family and community, one that the design community can personally relate with.
Scalability
The mascot can take different forms and be adapted across different mediums. For instance, the mascots can be used in such a way to communicate information to those using AHG. Conversely, they can be used as a symbol of design and AHG itself through merchandise, like stickers, hats, tote bags, and shirts, among other things.
Research
A mascot is something that people can relate to–one that they can rally behind and together see it as a beacon of the department. At UT, both Bevo and Hook Em’ are unifiers across the whole college. While students are spread across different schools, majors and studies, they are all unified under these two mascots as one collective “Longhorn Nation”.
In a smaller scale, the Spring 2022 wkrm team, which I was happy to be a part of, endeavored in a similar study, but with the College of Liberal Arts at UT. Our main mission was to develop a set of tees and posters for the department. But our research uncovered that, despite the broad number of majors and departments, there wasn’t one unifying element that united Liberal Arts, since it was so big and diverse. Students internally decided to create a mascot of their own: Tito the turtle, named after one of the turtles in the famous turtle pond on campus. With this, a unifying identity was born. The wkrm team decided to run with the mascot, and developed speculative environmental graphics, t-shirts and other ideas to help bring the mascot into the space and make it more relevant across the college’s portfolio of buildings and spaces.
This not only tested well with students, it started a larger conversation about how to placemake in the College of Liberal Arts, inspiring the Fall 2023 wkrm team to continue the work students did in the spring.
When starting the placemaking process for AHG in Spring 2023, we considered the idea of having a mascot for AHG. Thinking back to the idea of having someone or something represent the space really intrigued us, and we considered ways on how that would and could make the place more friendly.
This led to a prototype of creating an “unofficial” AHG mascot to place on a few signs and spaces in the environment, to see how well they test and read with users of the space. We tested the mascot on regulatory signs that instructed users how to RESET their space, from moving tables and chairs, to throwing trash away.
This showcases a speculative prototype of environmental graphics and signage done for the College of Liberal Arts, Spring 2022
This is a first ideation of an AHG mascot. Inspired by IKEA man, it aided to guide how to use AHG.
Another example of an iteration that showcases how to use and reset the space within AHG.
Iteration
This first prototype proved to be successful. Students, faculty and staff were surveyed about the new RESET verbiage and how easy it was to grasp and understand with the pictures and mascot. Everyone agreed that the photos were easier to grasp than sentences and words written out, yet the mascot and color choices would need some more iteration and work.
When reviewing the climate survey results, along with student interviews and testimonials, students expressed concern about the environment of AHG being cold and industrial, one that doesn't have a sense of warmth behind it. Placing mascots in specific places throughout the environment was aimed to help make the place more friendly and give the space more personality.
As part of the vision plan, an action was developed:
Create mascots for AHG that can extend into the environment: on signage, merchandise, and other means.
This required a lot of thought and care: who were the mascots to be, and what would be something people could rally around? What are the most practical solutions for implementing a mascot, given that it should be reproducible and easy to manipulate and use? And, who should be the one to design or create these mascots?
The answer was clear: students in the program should decide what the mascots were, and in turn, should design them.
Seniors Princeton Tran and Haley Jackson were chosen for their motivation, talent, and dedication to the design program. Both of them worked together to design a personality for both mascots, and that personality showed in the illustrations they did for each of the mascots.
The mascots were both named Scamper and Sunny. Scamper was named, as it’s a design thinking acronym that stands for: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. Sunny’s name was chosen as it paired with Scamper’s name through alliteration, and the abundance of natural light that shines through within the commons space of AHG. It’s also irony as Sunny’s personality centers around being lazy, a yang to Scamper’s yin.
This led to multiple iterations and installations of places that scamper and sunny could be placed, including refining sketches and illustrations in a way to communicate information to users of AHG.
The feedback and response to Scamper and Sunny was huge. Staff, faculty and students responded to the new mascots well. Through gathering feedback through conversations, Instagram messages and other sources, students loved the new mascots and really thought that it was a critical part of the design family.
Administration also responded well. They thought that the new signage helped complement the space aesthetically, and found that extending the mascots into the space that design inhabits made it feel like AHG was an exclusive home that design could soon rally around.
Using Sunny and Scamper's design, multiple iterations were created across different mediums, including stickers.
Using mascots as a means of community engagement extended to events and gatherings. In November, I collaborated with Kenny Ly (‘25) to plan a Friendsgiving event. During the event, community members had the opportunity to come together, enjoy food, and create their own screenprinted bags featuring either Sunny or Scamper. Attendees valued the tote bags and the chance to print their own unique Design-related designs on each bag. This fostered a sense of community among department members through exclusive swag, stickers, and other assets that were only available to members of the design community.
Another iteration of the mascots included a complementary and exclusive sticker pack, which was only available at AHG. This sticker pack was used to launch the mascots and to introduce them to the design community. The sticker pack proved to be so successful, that the stock of stickers ran low within 3 days of them launching, requiring more sticker production to be done.
The feedback on the stickers from students, faculty and staff was incredible. People raved about how they loved the new mascots, and how tied into the space they were. In addition, they not only saw them as benefits of having them help communicate information through better signage, but they also were have stickers from their own major–which before was lackluster, as the only “design department sticker” was one given out by SDCT, which was already perhaps in the hands of many students.
Creating exclusive merchandise with Sunny and Scamper proved to be successful, and people continued to clammer for more.
Next StepsThese mascots proved to be a big part of the space itself. Integrating them more into the space would be a next logical step. Some things to consider for how to do this may include:
- What are processes or procedures in AHG that feel “overwhelming”? How can a story, images, or simple language help simplify that process?
- What are surfaces that feel corporate or need intentional accents?
- How might the mascots play a larger role in the master plan and vision for AHG?
- What specific avenues of merch can be explored to help display these mascots? What AHG-related events can be held to help this merchandise become more mainstream, and in turn, build a more connected design community?
Future students who iterate on these mascots should consider not only how they connect and signal “design”, but also how they can serve as messaging and serve a role as a communicator.
The Student Vision for
Anna Hiss Gym
Designed by Zac DeLane, with assistance from the Spring 2022 wkrm Team
