Cartoon Network brand and licensing style guides
Cartoon Network • Role: Direction / Designer
Cartoon Network’s licensing division needed a way to ensure its characters were represented consistently across hundreds of consumer products and campaigns worldwide. My role was to develop comprehensive design and usage guides that transformed beloved shows into structured, scalable brand systems.
I created toolkits that included visual identity standards, packaging frameworks, typography and color systems, and usage scenarios tailored for licensees. These guides balanced creative inspiration with practical guardrails, enabling external partners to produce work that was both market-ready and true to Cartoon Network’s brand voice.
The outcome was a cohesive global licensing program that empowered partners to confidently launch products, campaigns, and experiences. By aligning creative execution with brand strategy, the guides directly supported licensing growth while preserving the distinct identity of Cartoon Network properties.
The Powerpuff Girls Movie
In this section, I focus on one specific guide, although it could have been any of the many I worked on. The Powerpuff Girls Movie was highly anticipated and created during the peak of PPG popularity. The Powerpuff Girls is one of my favorite properties to have worked on. I loved the character design, storylines, humor, and all the small details. I still see PPG products in the wild, and I’m so proud to have been part of it since the beginning and through many successes. Working with show creator Craig McCracken, Lauren Faust, and production artists and writers was a career highlight with an energy that I often try to recapture.
While the animation was taken care of by Cartoon Network Studios, our team collaborated closely with Craig McCracken and his team to create marketing and licensing materials as the production progressed. The first thing we did was redesign the logo, which I was responsible for. This logo was then used on various items, including the movie poster, comic books, and CDs.
Warner Brothers Studio Store, NYC
These window displays, created by myself and the licensing team, earned an award from Communication Arts magazine.
Guide content included elements such as packaging, character line-up, background, patterns, graphics, typography, and product concepts.
A peek behind the process: meeting notes, word association, sketches, color palette exploration, character art, graphic generation, and the printed guide for PPG seasonal supplement.
