From Wildlife Poster to Pillow Star: How Nantou's Leopard Cat 'JiJi' Was Born
To raise awareness for leopard cat conservation, Howdy Creative turned the endangered species into a round, huggable mascot named JiJi, designing it into pillows and stickers so a conservation message could live in people's homes rather than only on posters.
Challenge
The leopard cat is one of Taiwan's most important protected wild species, but most people find it distant and unfamiliar, and conservation messaging tends to stay stuck in dry, informational posters. The core task here was getting the leopard cat's image off the poster and into something people would actually want to bring home and see every day.
Goal
Design an endearing, memorable leopard cat mascot and extend it into practical products like pillows and stickers, upgrading conservation from one-way education into a daily sense of companionship, while giving a Nantou cultural museum initiative a marketable identity product of its own.
Approach
- Simplified the leopard cat's spot pattern into rounded lines and a signature squinty smile to create JiJi, an approachable mascot that replaces the distance of a realistic wildlife image.
- Developed two main colorways, mint green and matcha green, for the pillow design, pairing it with banana-leaf and geometric patterns so the character suits a range of home styles.
- Extended the product line to stickers and gift box packaging, all sharing JiJi's round tag mark so the full merchandise set reads as one coherent identity.
Outcome
JiJi went from a single conservation illustration to an actual sellable, giftable lifestyle product, carrying the leopard cat conservation message into everyday life in a lighter, more endearing way, and giving the Nantou cultural museum's integrated marketing plan a memorable signature item.
Questions people ask
about projects like this.
How do you turn a conservation topic into a product people actually want?
Howdy Creative simplifies a distant, realistic wildlife image into a rounded, endearing character, as with JiJi, whose signature squinty smile grew out of the leopard cat's own spot pattern, turning conservation education into something that lives in daily life through an approachable character.
How many products can one mascot character extend into?
Howdy Creative typically develops multiple colorways and material applications from a single character identity. JiJi's pillow line has two main colors, and the same round tag mark then extends into stickers and gift box packaging, keeping the whole product set visually consistent.
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