Paddlepop is a milk-based frozen dairy snack made by Streets and sold in Asia and Australia by Unilever. Popular with ages from 8-12, the brand's digital campaign in 2012 laid the groundwork for cross-channel storytelling, using an online entertainment portal filled with a gaming league and cartoon episodes to extend content engagement.

This year's theme 'Dinoterra', players were now able to collect virtual dinosaur pets for competing in dinosaur-themed games. They were also able to use currency collected in each game to purchase pet accessories that can enhance their pets’ abilities, giving them a competitive edge in the league.

We were tasked to design the entertainment portal and UI components for its games. Character illustration assets were supplied by Unilever, Dinopet models and skins by a third-party games company, and illustrations of Dinopet accessories by illustrator (wished I remembered their names). Graphic elements were created from a combination of these assets, footage from the cartoon series, and images of textures and nature.

While developing the art direction for the portal and its games’ interfaces, the main challenge was maintaining a balance between an interface design that was stimulating for young kids and easy to scan – e.g. bright vivid colours vs.eye fatigue? skeuomorphic vs simple elements? single vs. cluttered focus?

As the lighting and shadows were common in the designs, which meant lots of transparency, lesser grids and higher file sizes, it was necessary to ensure that the final product, optimized, closely matched the visual mockups. A design-to-development guide was created to minimize assumptions and effort made by developers, and to reduce development time.

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