About This Project

Meet Spark: Mascot Development & Launch Campaign

University of Niagara Falls Canada

The Brief

A university isn’t just an institution — it’s a community with a personality. As UNF established its identity, developing a mascot became an opportunity to give the brand a living, breathing character that could connect with students, staff, and the broader community in ways that traditional branding simply can’t. The challenge was to bring that character to life with the same rigour and intentionality as any other brand asset — and to launch it in a way that made the campus feel it.

From Concept to Character

The fox concept arrived with strong instincts already behind it — clever, energetic, and distinct. My role was to take that idea from illustration to reality.

Working as the creative lead within the mascot committee, I developed the vendor brief and reached out to multiple fabricators, collected and evaluated proposals, and brought a shortlist forward for the committee to vote on. Once a vendor was selected, the real creative work began: refining the character through an iterative process that wove UNF’s brand DNA directly into Spark’s design.

The details were deliberate:

• Blue gradient mane — a nod to Niagara Falls itself, the body of water that defines the city and the university’s home.
• Blue toe beans — a quiet, playful brand touch.
• Four blue bars on the sneaker — a direct pull from UNF’s core brand element, carried through to the character’s costume.

From there, the process moved into physical production: selecting fur and fabric swatches, reviewing samples, and keeping the committee informed and aligned at every stage — ensuring the final suit matched the creative vision.

The Launch: Building Anticipation

A mascot reveal is a brand moment, and it deserved to be treated like one. We built a multi-phase campaign that generated genuine campus excitement before anyone knew what was coming.

Teaser Phase: Instagram reels and guerrilla-style on-campus postering dropped cryptic hints, building curiosity and speculation without revealing the character. The campaign leaned into the energy of a product launch — because that’s exactly what it was.

The Naming Contest: Rather than assigning a name, we handed that decision to the community. Staff and students submitted ideas, the committee shortlisted the top three, and the campus voted. The winning name — Spark — was chosen by the people who would carry it forward. That kind of participatory launch creates ownership and affection that no top-down decision ever could.

Extending the Character

Once Spark had a name and a face, the work shifted to building out the ecosystem around him.

Custom Illustrated Emoji Set: Our junior designer — a talented illustrator — developed a bespoke Spark emoji set for Instagram, which was then pulled through across all mascot branding. It gave Spark a consistent, expressive digital presence that translated across platforms and content formats.

The UNF Foxes Jersey: Looking ahead to a future university sports program, I designed a custom jersey for the UNF Foxes. A limited run was produced including: one made to Spark’s measurements, worn by the mascot at appearances, and one awarded to the student whose name submission was selected — a meaningful keepsake that tied the launch moment to a real person in the community.

Spark Gift Boxes: Perhaps the most personal extension of the mascot brand is a custom Spark and UNF gift box, hand-delivered to the homes of local high school students alongside their acceptance letters. It transforms a letter into an experience — and positions UNF as a university that sweats the details from the very first impression.

Custom Spark Plushies: Working with a local vendor and an overseas factory, I led the development of a custom Spark plushie — a process that proved to be one of the most demanding production challenges of the project. Getting a soft goods character right requires an exacting eye and a willingness to reject work that isn’t there yet. We went through multiple rounds of prototyping, and when it became clear the original factory wasn’t capturing Spark’s character with the fidelity we needed, we made the call to switch manufacturers entirely rather than compromise the outcome.

The relationship with the vendor became genuinely collaborative over time — they developed such a clear understanding of the standard I’d set that they began filtering their own prototypes before sending them forward, knowing instinctively what would and wouldn’t pass. That’s the kind of trust that only comes from consistent, specific feedback and a shared commitment to getting it right. The final plushie is a faithful, high-quality reproduction of the character — and a testament to what patient, standards-driven production management produces.