ZURB
Bringing life and personality to one of the web’s most popular web frameworks.
Challenge
ZURB’s Foundation family helped developers build responsive websites, applications, and emails. As it gained traction, the team wanted a personality developers would recognise, enjoy, and feel some affection for. We wanted the mascot to have some of the wit and personality developers enjoyed in their own communities. Foundation was the starting point. ZURB’s related tools offered scope for more characters, each with a reason to look and behave differently.
Solution
Get to know the developers first
We explored what developers wanted from their tools and the personalities they enjoyed in the communities around them. Qualitative audience feedback helped us choose between creative directions before committing to production. Working with ZURB, we developed the Foundation Yeti and the brand materials that would introduce him to the community.
A character with a job to do
The products gave us plenty to work with. Inky, the email framework’s squid, had all those email clients to keep track of. Her tentacles made sense. We also gave one Yeti a more muscular build to reflect the heavy lifting developers expected of their tools.
The wider family included a Sassquatch for the social coding platform and a Snowman for the application framework. Each design drew on the tool it represented.
Familiar faces, fresh releases
We created supporting assets and thematic variations for later framework releases, giving the characters new things to do while keeping them recognisable.
Results
A Yeti with staying power
The Foundation character remained part of the framework’s identity for more than a decade. The framework itself was used across hundreds of thousands of websites.
“The brand has a personality now. There’s life behind the eyes. The community loves it.”
More characters followed
The reception to the Yeti led to further commissions across ZURB’s tools. The family grew because the team and community wanted more of it.
“Fairhead Creative is, hands down, the best freelance relationship I’ve ever had. They are always on top of our projects and quickly turnaround beautiful work. I can’t even imagine ever using anybody else.”
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