Key visual and art direction for Design Excellence Award, the annual Thai design award curated and produced by the Department of International Trade Promotion (DITP), Ministry of Commerce, Thailand.
After winning the DEmark Award with Thunder Bird Hostel in the Graphic Design category in 2018, Shake & Bake Studio was chosen to design DEmark Award 2019’s Key-Visual.
The two characters we came up for this project are THOUGHT and YIMM. THOUGHT isn’t exactly a designer, but professes great love for design. He wears glasses that designers like to wear. With the nose and mouth of an otter, he usually wears a striped t-shirt at home and always wears a blazer when attending social events.
YIMM, his friend, looks like a dog but not entirely a dog. His face looks like he’s always smiling (even when he pokes out his tongue). He doesn’t think of himself as THOUGHT’s pet, but he does feed of all sorts of design works THOUGHT brings home instead of food.
The ideas we had for the two characters came from the difficulty within the design process. We had to put so much thought into developing these characters, that finally got us imagining a person who’s thinking intensely about something. It explains why the heads of both THOUGHT and YIM reminisce the shape of a speech balloon in a manga.
THOUGHT and YIMM are representatives of the DEmark Award in calling for designers to submit their projects in the theme of “Design is Live!”.