Monster Club
Every year Bark comes up with 1-2 ‘Toy Club’ subscription add-ons that customers can get along with their monthly box subscription. I was tasked to come up with a collection of Bark IP characters that would be unique to us and this is how the idea of a ‘Monster Club’ came to be.
The ask
I was single handedly asked to come up with a mini-collection of 4-5 items that would define the design DNA for this collection. Once this mini-collection was approved, I was asked to create a style guide for this line so that other designers in the team could expand on the collection using the same design details, to compile a total of 15 monsters.
Below you can see my initial thoughts in the form of mood and inspiration boards:
Design Process
We created a total of 15 monsters collectively as a team that would come out on a monthly basis. Below I’ve captured the process as a whole and I’m only showing the monsters I designed with my original sketches and designs.
Character Exploration
The Super Chewer design language is very minimal and simple, but we knew we wanted these monsters to feel slightly more elevated and different to what customers are used to. Since this would be a special collection. So I did a deep-dive study on different facial features, expressions, eye and mouth explorations, face shapes, etc. You can see my exploration below:
Design Process
We created a total of 15 monsters collectively as a team that would come out on a monthly basis. Below I’ve captured the process as a whole and I’m only showing the monsters I designed with my original sketches and designs.
Character Exploration
The Super Chewer design language is very minimal and simple, but we knew we wanted these monsters to feel slightly more elevated and different to what customers are used to. Since this would be a special collection. So I did a deep-dive study on different facial features, expressions, eye and mouth explorations, face shapes, etc. You can see my exploration below:
Character Definition
After narrowing down the facial identity for this extra toy club, I created some simple guidelines for other designers to follow to ensure a cohesive collection:
Refined Concepts
When designing each monster we had to keep in mind what that month evoked for inspiration but without being too literal. For instance, our first monster being January we knew we wanted an ‘ice beast’ of sorts, so we took inspiration on this for overall shape and thought of cool tones for the month of January, and so on.
See the final concepts and product images of the months I worked on below:
Final Collection
The entire toy collection is outlined below. Out of all the months shown below the toys I personally designed were: January ‘22 and ‘23, February ‘22 and ‘23, March ‘22, April ‘22 and October ‘22. The rest of the items were designed by my colleagues: Katie Lim, Jake Brosius, Grayson Hild and Sirisa Gauchan.
