Our wonderful
world of licensing

Enabling Roald Dahl’s stories to explore exciting new areas meant creating licensing style guides that would retain all the unique magic of an amazing storytelling partnership. While previous style guides had combined all Roald Dahl titles into one design scheme and led to a one-size-fits-all product approach, we focused instead on individual books. This freed the brand to tailor new products to each story, build on readers’ loyalties, and exploit promotional opportunities with every new film and stage shows.

Whilst giving each of Roald Dahl’s wonderful books a new stage on which to shine, we instilled a family feel that connects the whole licensing collection. Our new assets include painterly splodges exploding over products and packaging, alongside new colour palettes, patterns, stamps, icons, silhouettes and playful typography. Product partners have risen to the challenge, and the Roald Dahl Story Company has now partnered with everyone from Rococo Chocolates and the Natural History Museum, to McDonalds and Persil.

Together with NBC we had the honour of developing a lifestyle brand for British television drama Downton Abbey. A style guide that transforms the inspiration of Downton Abbey into lifestyle products and packaging. Product categories were inspired by the rooms where the dramas of the family life and social hierarchy in this Edwardian stately home played out: the kitchen, drawing room and dressing room. Each room has its own design assets, illustrated in a classically elegant Downton style that holds the whole licensing program together.

Bluey is the perfect antidote for today’s hectic lifestyle. At its core is the joyful simplicity that can be found in family life, showcasing how children learn and grow through play. It has become Australia’s most streamed TV show and is now shown around the world.

Together with BBC Studios and Bluey creators, Ludo, we’ve loved the challenge of bringing the award-winning, animated series to life in a comprehensive licensing style guide that explores new brand extension opportunities. We have created over 100 new assets and designed product ideas that will make Bluey fans everywhere smile.

The queen of crime, Agatha Christie, is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her books are only outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare. We worked with Agatha Christie Limited to develop a new approach and design toolkit for licensed products and brand extension. To honour her legacy whilst delighting a new generation of style conscious consumers.

Since 2008 we’ve worked with brand guardians, Magic Light Pictures, to develop an iconic children’s brand with thoughtful licensing and inventive products that enrich the magical world of The Gruffalo.

With over 13 million copies sold across 52 languages, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s The Gruffalo is a much-loved modern classic, and the licensing programme needed to be carefully considered. We never strayed from the story’s essence and visual world; you don’t mess with something this good.

The Gruffalo’s 26 pages inspired a large and flexible library of design assets including poses, scenes, line art, patterns, textures, and packaging templates for a myriad of formats. The toolkit is part of a style guide that communicates the brand’s special qualities as well as defining the design implementation rules.

Now established as the evergreen pre-school brand, The Gruffalo licensing programme is growing year-on-year and now encompasses everything from ceramics and clothing to calendars and board games. Its much-loved status is confirmed through many successful partnerships, including a ride at Chessington, a set of postage stamps and a Royal Mint coin. Together Design has now been collaborating with the brand team for more than a decade, and we recently refreshed The Gruffalo’s main guide, and created a style guide for their limited-edition 20^th anniversary collection.