Designing Uncle Moishy’s New Character and New Brand

The Old Uncle Moishy Character

The phone rang one day and I was asked by one of Uncle Moishy’s sons to create a new cartoon mascot character of Uncle Moishy. Uncle Moishy’s son told me about Uncle Moishy’s 40+ years as a Jewish children’s entertainer and about his international fame. He then showed me the Uncle Moishy character (shown on the right) they had used all that time. I was a little shocked, because the old Uncle Moishy character, if it wasn’t for the smile, looked like a character running for his life. To my eyes, it didn’t even resemble Uncle Moishy and it was a travesty that the previous company marketing Uncle Moishy hadn’t improved it in all those years!

The New Uncle Moishy Character

They told me that this new Uncle Moishy character, if they liked it, might lead to designing their new brand and to many other things like packaging, website, and even more items like posters, flyers, more character poses etc. I wasn’t sure what to think as I had never heard of Uncle Moishy. Apparently he is extremely well known throughout the world, but primarily to the Jewish community.

So the project began with me designing the new Uncle Moishy cartoon character. This was not very difficult because Uncle Moishy is a character unto himself. As a character designer and cartoonist there was a lot to grab onto with his prominent beard, bola-type wide-brim hat with the Jewish symbol on top, bit of a tummy, and unique costume he always wears in his performances.

When I was designing the new Uncle Moishy character, I tried many different poses. It made sense, that since Uncle Moishy sang children’s songs, he should have a mic in one hand. But what to do with the other hand? After watching a few videos of Uncle Moishy’s performances, I saw that Uncle Moishy would often raise his hand up. So I settled on a pose where Uncle Moishy is excited, smiling and waving as if to say “Hi !”

The New Uncle Moishy Logo

The next step of the project was to design a new logo for Uncle Moishy and incorporate the new Uncle Moishy character into it. Since Uncle Moishy’s target audience is very young children, we decided to make the new Uncle Moishy logo bright and cheerful and have him pop out of the Jewish symbol that Uncle Moishy wears prominently on his bola-type wide-brim hat.

I did like the different colored letters in the Uncle Moishy text of their old logo. The varying bright colors are often associated with young child in the design industry. But the old font had to go. Since Uncle Moishy is known for melodic music and rhyme, I wanted a font that seemed to dance. After much research, I settled on a new font and the client like it!

So what did we have to work with for the new logo? The new Uncle Moishy character, the Jewish symbol he wears on his hat, a font that dances with each letter being a bright and cheerful color. Wow! That’s a lot. The new Uncle Moishy logo was practically designing itself…and here it is, the new Uncle Moishy logo…

The New Uncle Moishy CD Packaging

Uncle Moishy and his family were very pleased with my work thus far, so they asked me to design the CD packaging for their new music CD coming out. Again, they wanted me to incorporate the new colorful Uncle Moishy text and the new Uncle Moishy character.

The new music CD coming out was being called “Welcome”…what a stroke of luck! The new Uncle Moishy character I had designed was in a pose that looked like he could be saying “Welcome” instead of “Hi” that I had originally designed. So once again, deciding what to draw for the front of the CD packaging was becoming a no-brainer…

The CD package contains a 16 page booklet full of each song’s lyrics and a glossary of hebrew terms at the end. Plus some dedications and special thanks from Uncle Moishy himself.

It also identifies the various lyric writers and composers and the 45 piece orchestra that accompanied Uncle Moishy in the production of all the songs on this new Uncle Moishy CD.

The New Uncle Moishy World Website

For the next step of this project, I was hired to design and develop the new Uncle Moishy World website. Uncle Moishy’s son and I brainstormed about the website. He wanted online games and coloring book pages that Uncle Moishy fans (mostly children) could come and play. A place they would return to again and again…

So I did some research and found lots of online games and coloring pages we could incorporate into the new Uncle Moishy World website. But alas, the actual content of the jigsaw puzzle games, coloring pages, and other arcade type games were not Jewish oriented. So I modified the art for all of the games and created a site that boasts some fun animated movement to images and buttons. A site with bright colors and of course, the new Uncle Moishy character on the home page bidding his welcome to the world…

See the new Uncle Moishy World website live.

The Work Continues

The work continues now with designing and developing for social media headers, advertisements, posters, products and more.