This cartoon logo was created for property maintenance and management company Orange Elephant. The name was chosen purely for it’s unique combination. Often, clients have a story behind a company name which I always try to mine for inspiration when developing a character for the logo mascot.

For this design project, it was pretty much a matter of “we need an orange handyman elephant charter, with a self-assured, can-do attitude”. And I can oblige in these situations as well.

While the character itself remained fairly true to the sketches, the initial color art revealed an issue we hadn’t planned on — the mascot character and logo being placed on shirts with the orange branding colors.

Not wanting to have the character blend in to the background, I had to rework the art to give him a white t-shirt. Initially the client had suggested he wear the actual employee shirt, but that would have resulted in an orange elephant wearing an orange shirt.

In the end, I feel we found a superior solution to the design challenge anyways, with the white shirt helping to really emphasize the orange of the Orange Elephant.