The Eyes Have It How We Brought Creative Booms Mascot To Life In Different Time Zones

Creative Boom: The eyes have it: How we're bringing Creative Boom's mascot to life in different time zones Our friendly eyes have been getting some love thanks to motion designer Dan Silverstone and our own development team. Keep an eye on them because they'll now offer lots more entertainment depending on seasons, events, and whether it's night or day. It's been nearly 10 years since we introduced Creative Boom's mascot: the eyes that you see everywhere across our magazine, podcast and community. They don't do much, but they certainly seem to have a personality of their own.

And weirdly, they can flip from cheeky and lovable to nosey and naughty without changing very much at all. We owe this part of our story to Samantha Wilkinson, a designer who had worked at The Chase and had just gone freelance. We spent a good 12 months going through a rebrand and new website design together, and part of that effort was establishing a new mascot to help add life to Creative Boom. "I want it to come alive and be a character of its own," I said. "Like it's everyone's friend, keeping a watchful, caring eye over everything." She came back with initial concepts and the eyes featured on one of her routes. It was perfect.

Subtle, but everything I wanted in two circles and two dots. Through some simple code, we made them move on our website, too: the eyes follow the mouse cursor on desktop, and flit back and forth as you scroll on mobile. Even the favicon changes depending on whether you've got us on a closed or open tab. The 2017 logo and mascot for Creative Boom, by Samantha Wilkinson The 2017 logo and mascot for Creative Boom, by Samantha Wilkinson Our cheeky favicon Our cheeky favicon I tell you what: those eyes have done us proud. People really like them. They tell us they spend ages making them go cross-eyed.

They proved so popular and a fundamental part of our brand that at some point, we started using the 'eyes' emoji elsewhere – on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. Yes, yes, I know what Gen Z reads into them. To me and our community, though, they've become Creative Boom. What was quite unexpected is how those eyes can stop harsh comments about rebrands in their tracks. They can add friendly mischief to just about anything, helping to keep the peace and make people smile. You could say those eyes are, well, me. I can't help that Creative Boom has so much of Katy Cowan in its personality. Sure, there's a team of us these days.

But once you've established a brand voice, it's hard to be anything but what you've become. And that's just the mascot. Our new identity in 2017 was a turning point for my platform (thank you, Samantha). It marked a shift from our grassroots beginnings to a serious publisher, sharing the latest news and insight from the creative industries. We've since worked with our Manchester pals at Nine Sixty to develop our brand, as Samantha is committed elsewhere (she's now design director at Edit Brand Studio in Manchester). Andy and Mark have really helped us evolve, and we introduced an evolution of Samantha's in 2021.

Andy also designed our podcast's identity. And illustrations came from Jane Bowyer. For something we launched nearly a decade ago, it's been amazing to see it flourish. NineSixty's web design for our 2021 relaunch – the site you still see today NineSixty's web design for our 2021 relaunch – the site you still see today A good five or six years ago, motion designer Dan Silverstone – a former guest on our podcast and founder of Pica – offered to create some little motion stickers for Instagram. Dan has worked for the likes of Google, Nike, Penguin, Design Museum and Deloitte, so how could we refuse?

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The article discusses a creative branding strategy that is relevant to the industry, though the concept of character-driven branding is not entirely new.