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Project overview
MAHROC came to StudioDraft for a brand refresh. We created the brand strategy, positioning, verbal and visual identity, including a new logo system inspired by the sun and moon behind the MAHROC name.
Does your brand need a mascot?
Sometimes.
Cheetos has Chester Cheetah. Michelin has the Michelin Man. Duolingo has an owl that has developed a more convincing personality than most people on LinkedIn.
Mascots work because they give a brand a character people can recognise.
But you don't always need to draw one.
Sometimes the brand itself can become the character.
That was the idea behind our refresh for MAHROC.
A mascot gives a brand a face.
Personality gives it a point of view.
MAHROC already had an interesting world.
It made bags from old and leftover textiles, worked across cultures and crafts, and turned fabrics with a past into objects people wanted to carry.
So instead of inventing a mascot, we personified the brand itself.
We defined how the brand spoke, what it cared about and how it behaved.
The result was a brand that could talk directly to people rather than needing a character to do the talking for it.
If the name has a story, use it.
MAHROC comes from the sun and the moon.
So we brought both into the identity.
The logo and icon were designed around that duality, while taking cues from Istanbul and the mix of old and new that already existed in the brand.
A refresh should make the brand more itself.
We weren't trying to turn MAHROC into something new.
We were trying to make what was already interesting about it easier to see.
The visual identity, language and applications all came from the same personality: curious, well travelled, warm and interested in the stories behind things.
That gave MAHROC a character of its own.
The best brand characters don't always have faces.
Today, MAHROC carries many more stories than the one we started with.
Across collections, collaborations, materials and places, the brand has grown without losing the personality at the centre of it.
Which is probably the best argument for personification.
Your brand may need a mascot.
Or it may just need to know who it is.
