How an internet joke gave Lettre a mascot – Raising Pippin
The first time I heard of the idea behind Lettre was in March of 2023, when Atik – someone who I’ve never met but feel like I know as a close friend through almost three years of nightly gaming sessions – showed a few of us the prototype of what he and a friend (Mashfique) had been working on.
The anachronistic nature of the app instantly appealed to me. Being born into the chaotic world of the internet and personal computing, seeing first hand the rise of smartphones and messaging apps and the overstimulation that comes with it – I had always felt like I would have preferred belonging to a different era. Although I participate regularly in adding to the noise of social networking, I felt the idea behind Lettre was grounded in an idea of asking people to slow down, to contemplate and organize their thoughts before sharing them.
I had a lot of jumbled thoughts to share on the product and where it could go, what it could potentially do – subsequently, Atik asked that I define a role for myself and come onboard with Lettre. Considering the app was getting ready for internal testing and Atik needed someone to cover the product marketing side, I volunteered.
The first task was to build a brand around the app, and give it an identity that would resonate with the artists, writers and thinkers we wanted to bring to the platform when it eventually launched. Naming, website, investor pitch decks and brand guidelines were needed, and we got to work.
Initial storyboarding and contextual sketches
For any brand, it’s important to convey a story, create the basis for customers to connect with it, and develop the “lore” that can set it apart from others. For Lettre, we wanted to tell the story of our app through the lens of a mascot which would not only serve as the anchor point for our social media content, but also help us gamify the in-app interactions and provide delighters wherever possible.
The idea of using a pigeon as a mascot started as a reference to an April Fools’ joke and a legitimate patent of using pigeons as carriers of internet packet data. First hypothesized in RFC 1149 issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force by D. Waitzman on April 1, 1990, Internet Packet over Avian Carrier (IPoAC) or CPIP was successfully tested once, for only nine packets of data and a packet loss ratio of 55%.
The letter-carrying homing pigeon of old was back in digital form, with an actual engineering implementation – joke or not – backing it up.
An early variant, along with the color palette.
Satisfied with the concept, we brought in our own Studio Ghibli influenced illustrator and animator on board – Ariffin Shumonto is a name you will soon hear as one of the most talented animators to come out of Bangladesh, and we felt his happy, bright and quirky art style would be a perfect fit for Pippin the Pigeon.
The final form of Pippin, plus concept sketches
Styling Pippin over the course of two weeks, starting from rough outlines where his figure and shape was sketched, to choosing the teal-gray-yellow color palette, the decisions were seamlessly made with the teams. They say it’s a good sign if key decisions are made fast and things just fall into place, and despite not knowing who “they” are, we think we agree.
“For me, good character design is one with a well-defined silhouette. Once I was satisfied with the shapes, I delved into the details and colors.
There is actually a film titled “Spies in Disguise” produced by Blue Sky Studios, which featured fun looking pigeons. An interesting titbit about the studio is they were involved in the making of Ice Age movies. A lot of inspiration was taken from there.
The pigeon, often associated with conveying messages, resonates well with the concept of the slow-paced communication that Lettre.app embodies. ”
The final form of Pippin was just the right amount of crazy, quirky and slightly overwhelmed pigeon for the rest of the team to instantly agree with the design choices we had made. The eyes hinted at a slight madness, the letter bag and the mailman hat were delightful details and overall, we felt we had struck a character lore goldmine. We tested that by having our social media illustrator and designer Farshid Humayun sketch up a social-friendly, less detailed Pippin in various situations. Crazy ideas like Pippin having a nemesis in the form of a letter stealing crow, Pippin’s murky origins in a government laboratory creating surveillance pigeons and him breaking out, even finding a way to bring in a cat and all types of characters into Lettre’s canon were considered.
Low fidelity Pippin for social media posts
For social media communication, the idea was to combine the “letter” elements, our brand colors and established characters into posts that espoused a neo-brutalist theme. We wanted to whip up posts fast and easy, while keeping clutter to a minimum. Through the design system we had for our posts, we wanted to establish a mnemonic theme that should be instantly recognizable in a year’s time – given we gain the kind of audience we’re expecting.
At the end of the day, having fun with the brand you create is what matters. Lettre is not an established brand or a household name, and these first few shaky steps towards building something concrete is where a team of creatives can have the most fun. Strict adherence to a corporate identity or corporate design guideline can have benefits, sure, but when it comes to connecting with people, it’s best to lead with the heart.
