During my time as a brand design intern at Hasbro I had the opportunity to work on actual product packaging for the Fall 2017 line look. Well, about a month into my internship my supervisor explained that we needed a new graphic to show compatibility between Playskool Friends products. Not to point any fingers, but Sesame Street is very anal about their IP and rejected our current graphic.

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We previously had arranged all four characters interwoven in a friendly group. How cute! Except Elmo was not allowed to be touching anyone else, so we had to come up with something new.

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Graphic Iterations

 

I set out to create a graphic that communicated the compatibility of the new Playskool Friends products. The objective was to make something simple, cleaner, and easily understood with a cursory glance. I came up with the idea of puzzle pieces fitting together; it shows compatibility between products, keeps all of the characters separate (looking at you Sesame), and scales easily. Lastly, if the product line adds any new characters in the future, the puzzle lends itself well to being easily edited and reconstructed.

 

My early concepts lacked the feel of the Playskool Friends brand, so I iterated and landed on the final product seen above. We paired it with the Playskool Friends logo and "Discover the world of Playskool friends" to really tie it in with the brand. Below is an example of my work on an actual product which made it to shelves Fall 2017.