Wee Ginger Dug
Wee Ginger Dug is the Mascot of The National, the leading independent newspaper of Scotland. He’s a real lovable scamp of a dog who we translated into a toy for their subscribers.
Wee Ginger Dug
A National Icon of Scotland
‘Wee Ginger Dug’ is the writing name for columnist, blogger and author Paul Kavanagh and the name for his popular column in the Scottish newspaper The National. Paul travels everywhere with his faithful sidekick, the actual Wee Ginger Dug, and the newspaper felt it was time for Dug to be immortalised as a plush mascot. Naturally we were delighted to help out.
To get started, our artists sketched Dug from the many photographs so we could capture his essence and create a mascot that would be as lovable and filled with personality as its namesake.
When creating the sketches, our artist was able to highlight important characteristics, such as Dug’s eyebrows, the white tip to his tail and his paws, as well as the natural curves and structure of Dug’s body.
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From the sketches we decided on this rare occasion that we had enough design information to progress to creating a sample without the need for a 3D CGI.
Creating a great mascot is all about interpretation and not simply creating a literal replica of the subject. Dug in reality had thin, long legs which would never work in a plush toy. With a proportionally larger head and shorter legs, our toy version came to life.
The final challenge was capturing Dug’s face with it’s bushy white beard and we experimented with materials and styles until he had just the right level of rogueish charm.
The final touch, as Dug was being used as a gift to new subscribers to The National newspaper, was to find somewhere to put their masthead logo, so he could do his job of promoting the paper wherever he was seen.
Fortunately, in Dug’s case, we didn’t need to add a woven tag as we had the perfect place to print the newspaper’s logo around his collar.
So with that final detail in place, we were ready to manufacture and deliver the finished version to the client.
Both Paul and Dug were delighted with the finished product, even if Dug himself was more interested in quality testing his namesake by checking it passed all the important chew tests.
For The National themselves, the subscription drive has been a complete success with the entire order of toy mascot versions of Dug now all gone and a new order already received from them for another batch.
Proof that mascots can not only represent your business but also help drive sales.
