Project: Create a cartoon character to be used throughout the R.A.P. Promotions offices as a fun, inspirational and instructional image.
R.A.P. is a telemarketing company, working in conjunction with a Provincial Police Association and Garden Brothers Circus. The employees working the phone lines are usually young students and the job can sometimes feel unrewarding after an unresponsive call or two. The client’s refreshing philosophy concerning his business is that it should be productive, (with quotas and deadlines given due priority) - but it should also be fun.
The R.A.P. offices and training sessions required some new visual aids and a series of unconventional, inspirational posters. I came up with the idea of having some kind of character that embodied the fun aspect of the job R.A.P. wanted to emphasize while also expressing the nature of the work itself. From these simple ideas I created ‘The Telefun Dude’.
The inspiration came from an old plastic toy: A little musical play phone. It was just a bright red and yellow scaled-down, chunky version of a real phone but when I held the kid-size handpiece, I could visualize it with expressive limbs and a shortened curly-cord tail. Although quite original in design, the character is heavily influenced by the drawing style of the late Vaughn Bode - one of my cartooning heroes. A series of posters and cartoon strips were all rendered as part of the assignment and these led to the addition of training manual covers, daytime planners and schedulers.