Case study: Non Juan

We’ve been assigned to create a branding for the nonjuan.com — first of all to make a strong character that will be easily recognizable by the audience and carry all the needed traits client wanted.

The requirements were more or less as follows: Non Juan is a comical dude who always experience fails of epic proportions trying to date a girl; he is an African-American guy with somewhat unkempt look, a bit nerdish (but not too much), not too upset with the current state of things, cheerful and funny. As Non Juan himself is saying: “I’m just like Don Juan — minus the ladies, money, charm, and everything else.”

First iteration produced someone too confident in himself rather than awkward.

Non Juan first iteration



Putting glasses on wasn’t much help either.

Non Juan with glasses



After this point was decided to make several sketches for the client to approve the overall look. The sheet with rejected (oh irony — Non Juan [Rejected] is how the logo looks like now!) characters:

Non Juan sketches



And here is the sheet with the “getting closer” results:

Non Juan sketches 2



This is where the current Non Juan was born:

Non Juan Character



In the production of the site itself we created humongous amount of illustrated characters, thingies, backgrounds etc.

Non Juan Production



Visit online and enjoy at NonJuan.com

9 commentsposted by Basil Gloo on 08/10/2009
9 Comments

  1. Wow! Great mascot, guys. Cute and fun. Does he really have problems with girls? :)

    Paul
    14 Aug at 9:46 am

  2. i have to tell you, i really enjoy reading your posts. I’m gonna set your blog as my homepaeg ;)

    Blake
    3 Sep at 10:26 pm

  3. Thanks! Website is finally online: http://www.nonjuan.com

    Basil Gloo
    7 Sep at 1:43 pm

  4. [...] you can read our case study which describes how the current Non Juan was [...]

    Non Juan | Downrex
    23 Sep at 9:36 am

  5. good wordpress work guys

    chris
    13 Oct at 9:22 pm

  6. I’d like to see a real life Non Juan.

    Will
    10 Dec at 6:27 am

  7. Just some updates – - Our innovative marketing plan in association with the GREAT work of e1k set the tone for a great deal of success since our site launch… The character became a custom puppet who produced videos that have been picked up by major outlets with latest getting over 13K views in two days (see http://www.youtube.com/nonjuanrejected ). Also, the hilarious tweets are extremely popular with over 14K followers currently ( http://twitter.com/nonjuan ). Finally, the site is becoming VERY popular with a growing fan base of over 3K unique visitors monthly.

    Thank you SOOO Much Guys!

    Non Juan
    23 Dec at 7:53 am

  8. Two conceptual problems, IMO : first is the snark element, which hints at bitterness or jealousy, perhaps arrogance of youth. Temporal and downbeat. Second is the that most men are failures or at least there are very few winners in modern society. Making a special effort for the general case seems odd.
    Talented drawing, though.

    jorjun
    11 Feb at 11:32 am

  9. 2jorjun:

    I really fail to see the bitterness in this character. He is as strangely upbeat as possible even despite the obvious failiness of his methods of communication with the opposite sex. I am not sure about the fact that most men are failures — maybe this is the cultural difference but still this’ll make the project audience even wider.

    dram
    22 Feb at 7:19 pm

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