WebDesignFan.com

Besides a catchy name and a great logo, having a mascot is one of the best ways of imprinting a marketing message into minds and getting people talking about a brand. Of course, mascots have been popular in advertising since the early days. Some, like Tony the Tiger and the Kool-Aid Man have endured for decades, becoming celebrities in their own right. Only recently, however, have mascots become hugely popular online too, as web designers, constantly striving to engage with users and make their sites more memorable, have started to realize the full power of the mascot’s marketing potential.

Here we take a look at the 25 most amazing mascots on the web. You’ll find a veritable mascot menagerie below, with only nine human mascots included in our list. We’ve got everything, from the web’s most famous A-list mascots, like the Twitter birdie and Jeeves himself, to more underground characters, like the FIFTYEIGHT 3D blob and the Coupon Ninja. Which one’s your favorite?

1. Twitter Fail Whale

The Fail Whale isn’t Twitter’s official mascot, but is commonly used to represent Twitter’s downtime and the community’s love for the service. Designed by Yiying Lu, this iconic character has its own fan club and can be found on T-shirts, stickers and caps the world over.

2. Twitter Birdie

The Twitter birdie, a mascot that we’re all familiar with, represents anticipation, fun and the tiny size of tweets. According to reports, the birdie was bought for just $6, $29 less than Nike paid Carolyn Davidson for the Swoosh logo.

3. Cork’d

The Cork’d mascot is not particularly imaginative, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s simply a man wearing a Cork’d T-shirt, holding a glass of wine. Hardly thinking outside the goon considering that it’s a wine blog, but it gives the site a personality of its own.

4. Toshiyuki Kuwabara

Toshiyuki’s friendly-looking burglar mascot has been lovingly designed. Everything from its eyes to its woolly jumper look so realistic, you feel like you can almost touch them. The mascot says little about the company itself, other than it has the technical capabilities to create work of this exceptionally high standard.

5. Cartridge Save

Cartridge Dave, the Cartridge Save badger, puts paid to the badger’s reputation as a rather fierce creature that you really wouldn’t want to bump into down a dark country road. Dressed in a blue-collared shirt and slacks, Dave welcomes users to the site, paying tribute to the company’s customer service record.

6. Silverback

Dressed in a remarkably similar shirt to Cartridge Dave and holding an identical clipboard, Silverback the mountain gorilla represents the strength and reliability of the Silverback app.

7. MailChimp

Naked but for his postman’s hat and bag, the MailChimp chimp represents the lighthearted brand identity of this company. The initial thought behind the character was: “Email marketing is so easy, a monkey could be doing it…”

8. Firefox

The Mozilla Firefox isn’t an anthropomorphic creature like most mascots- it has no human features whatsoever. Strangely, it looks little like the real thing either, but nevertheless represents the speed of a fire and the cunning of a fox.

9. Coupon Ninja

Dressed head-to-tow in black, with nothing but the whites of his eyes and two sparkling sword-like weapons showing, the Coupon Ninja is the first thing that hits you when you visit this site. The ninja not only looks cool, it represents speed, stealth and reliability.

10. Elitist Snob

Elitist Snob has quite possibly the most hilarious mascot in this list: an artist painting a heart, smoking a cigarette and sporting a beret in a fashion befitting only of a Frenchman. It’s a unique and very memorable idea, which sets the tone for a jocular, but informative blog.

11. Crayons

This grinning, Belgian crayon is based on an inanimate object- a real rarity in the mascot world. It waves, welcoming visitors to the site. Roll your cursor over the site’s tabs and the crayon’s expression and arm gestures change to keep users interested and involved. Annoyingly however, it looks a little too much like Clippy, the Microsoft paperclip we all love to hate!

12. HostGator

With so many companies offering web hosting, it’s crucially important to stand out from the crowd. Having a good mascot is a great way of achieving this. The rather sinister looking HostGator gator, unusually blue and yellow in color, is an effective aide memoir for visitors.

13. Ask Jeeves

Jeeves, the ever-helpful butler from Ask.com, is perhaps the most high-budget mascot in this list. He invites users to search in a subtle but extremely successful way: by offering interesting search suggestions. Dressed in a classic suit and tie, everything from Jeeves’s skin tone to the light reflecting off his polished shoes looks ultra realistic.

14. GEICO

Question: what’s a gecko got to do with car insurance? Answer: absolutely nothing! The GEICO gecko serves one purpose only- to help potential customers remember GEICO’s otherwise rather forgettable company name.

15. Justin Bird

Looking somewhat like the Twitter Birdie’s obese younger brother, Justin Bird’s boggle-eyed, feathered friend is a beautifully designed character. Hover your cursor over it and the bird attempts to take flight- a great way to get visitors interacting with the site.

16. FIFTYEIGHT 3D

Quite possibly the most brilliantly executed web mascot of all time, FIFTYEIGHT 3D’s website is fronted by a fat, smiling, yellow blob with no arms. It’s totally random, but animated beautifully. Watch it plummet through a trapdoor, fall off a chair, blow itself up and get into various other scrapes. You can even fight the mascot in a Street Fighter-style showdown!

17. Branded07

Often the most unusual animals make for the most memorable mascots. Web and graphic designer, Rob Palmer, has chosen a pair of puffins. These puffins mirror the contents of each page with their actions: on the Portfolio page, an arty, mustachioed puffin stands by an easel; and on the Blog page, a puffin stands next to a loud hailer.

18. Moourl.com

If you want your visitors to feel positive after leaving your site, it’s a good idea to create a mascot that’s ridiculously cute. Moourl.com succeeds with its adorable cow mascot, complete with smiley snout, rosy cheeks and peachy little udders.

19. Photoshop Lady

The vast majority of technology and design based blogs are aimed squarely at men. It’s hard to tell, however, whether the Photoshop Lady has been created to appeal to female users or men who like the idea of having a sexy secretary. Either way, she brightens up our day and certainly makes the site more memorable!

20. YoDiv

YoDiv’s website is populated by not one, but tens of little spheres with legs, some with moustaches, some wearing hard hats, all of which look like they could have been drawn in about ten seconds flat. Nevertheless, they help to give the company a really cool and fun personality.

21. Dharmafrog

Like the Septapus, the Dharmafrog can also take visitors “home”. Accompanied by a speech bubble proclaiming “keep it green”, the frog mascot adds an air of professionalism to this family-orientated blog.

22. Datejs

Datejs is an open-source JavaScript date library with a really cool mascot- a ninja. It’s not particularly original or well executed, but what makes this feudal mercenary so cool is the funny sayings it comes out with when clicked on, such as: “Ninjas do not get frostbite, ninjas bite frost”.

23. Firebug

Firebug is a hugely popular web development tool. Its mascot is not full of life like the others in this list- it’s simply a firebug- an orange beetle that doesn’t even have a face. It’s not the personality that’s important here. The firebug is a unique and instantly recognizable symbol for the brand.

24. Elephant

Just like Ladybird, Elephant have managed to make buying insurance online fun thanks to its elephant mascot. Dressed in a suit and sneakers (it just doesn’t get any trendier than that), the elephant guides you through the laborious insurance purchasing process.

25. CreamScoop

CreamScoop’s somewhat solemn looking mascot has creamy blonde hair with a beard like a slick of soft-scoop ice cream. This mascot’s serious about one thing and one thing only- web development. The mascot helps the company come across as focused and hardworking, but in a lighthearted way.