Bao Quyen
Illustrator & Storyteller
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Verra Kids - Building a Playful Illustration System for a Children’s Supplement Brand
In collaboration with: Brand Kitchen
My role: Mascot detailing and character illustration system
For Verra Kids, I collaborated with Brand Kitchen on a rebrand for a children’s supplement brand. My role was to create illustrated brand elements that would help define the visual identity in a playful, memorable and highly recognizable way.
The project focused on two main parts: refining the facial features of the brand mascot, and designing a set of characters called Životíci — little creatures representing the everyday health problems children may encounter throughout life.
The Brief
Brand Kitchen approached me during the rebrand process with a need for custom illustrated elements that would become part of the core brand language.
The goal was to create visuals that would feel simple, friendly and easy to recognize, while still being distinctive enough to work as key brand assets. The illustrations needed to share one visual style and clearly belong to the same world, even though they would serve different purposes within the identity.
01 — The Mascot
One part of the brief focused on a furry mascot, imagined as a soft, gummy-like character.
My task was to design custom eyes and a matching mouth for him. These details were not meant to be just expressive features — they were intended to become an important brand differentiator and a key branding element that could also function independently across applications.
The starting point was to create:
- a first version of the eyes in an open expression
- a toothy smiling mouth that would match them
- a style precise enough to allow future variations
The eyes and mouth needed to feel more refined and developed than the other illustrated characters in the system, because they were also expected to work on their own — for example combined with the brand’s green colour or used as a standalone graphic detail.
02 — Životíci
The second part of the project was the creation of the Životíci — small characters embodying physical problems a child may encounter during life.
The brief described them as simple figures that should all share the same basic visual logic, such as matching arms and legs, while changing in the shape of the torso or body to communicate who they are.
I designed a set of characters including:
- Bakterka
- Prdík
- Kazík
- Nudlinka
- Virusák
- Zvracík
- Zlominka
- Bříškobol
- Zápaleček
- Kašlánek
- Bolehlávek
- Strupánek
- Krvík
Each one needed to be immediately understandable through its silhouette and body concept, while still fitting into a cohesive family of characters.
Creating a Shared Visual Language
A central challenge of the project was consistency.
The mascot’s eyes and mouth, and the Životíci themselves, did not need to be identical in complexity — but they needed to instantly feel like they came from the same brand universe.
That meant working with a unified drawing style, line quality and overall expression. The line had to be clean and controlled, while the characters still needed to feel lively, approachable and fun for a children’s audience.
Illustration as Branding
What made this project especially interesting was that these illustrations were not standalone decorative images. They were created as functional branding tools.
The mascot features were designed to become recognizable brand signatures, while the Životíci helped give shape to the themes the brand communicates around children’s health.
Together, they formed a flexible visual system — one that could support the brand across packaging, communication and future applications while making the identity feel more distinctive, playful and engaging.
A Character-Driven Identity
This collaboration with Brand Kitchen showed how illustration can become a structural part of a brand, not just an addition to it.
By developing both a mascot expression system and a cast of supporting characters, I helped create a visual language for Verra Kids that could speak to children and parents in a way that feels accessible, warm and memorable.