Euro 2024 mascot: London-based creator on how it was done
City A.M. sat down with Darran Garnham, founder and chief executive of Toikido and creator of the Euro 2024 mascot.
So, what makes a good mascot and what does Uefa tell you is off limits? Let’s find out.
How did the Euro 2024 mascot come about?
“There was an element of luck to it. The Fanatics [company] team saw another project that we were launching,” Garnham tells City A.M.
“They’d seen our Smashlings [online Roblox figures] and approached us and said: ‘Look, we have a brief out to a lot of agencies at the moment’.
“We designed nine or 10 different characters and then the feedback from Uefa was that they’d like a bear – a bear being quite synonymous with Germany.
“I think they liked our approach. We bought them the Roblox game, and said that we’d build them a game within our game.
“And the other piece being we’re quite used to designing brands and IP that naturally go into consumer products and toys. So we built them something that was very commercial, actually.”
What’s the Worst mascot ever made?
“If you look at like the worst mascots ever made.
“I think I said on Sky yesterday, the Olympics 2012, the mascots are… [bad]… I know people in my industry that are still sat on product now,11 years later, they can’t sell.
Best mascot ever?
“My first mascot is Mexico 86, which I loved.
“I thought that was fantastic.
“The ones that were good were the Beijing Olympics ones, they were very good. They were very commercial.”
What can’t you do?
“They just said go for it, send us send us what you think and they came back with feedback on what they would like the shirts.
“So the shirt that we designed includes all of the colours of every nation that’s competing, but in quite a nice way and we haven’t hacked all the flags together, we’ve done it in a really lovely creative way
“I’d say what was lovely is every Friday, we’d have a big call, and it would be Toikido, Fanatics and some of the Uefa team my designer would sit on that call.
“He would make changes in real time.
“But no, they they asked us to make the legs longer at one stage because it was quite a short mascot and then we extended it to make it the legs a bit longer and just very just very subtle thing.”
Garnham even made me a Smashling of myself…
