In timeless stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Matilda, the author Roald Dahl introduces wonderfully one-of-a-kind characters and worlds that have mesmerized generations of children and more than a few adults. Pentagram has developed a new brand identity for the Roald Dahl Story Company that celebrates the wit and whimsy of this storytelling with imagination, creativity and most importantly, mischief. The system is designed to modulate across a wide variety of stories, formats, and the audiences who enjoy them, and comes complete with a puckish and playful custom typeface called Fantastic Mr. Font.
Home to the writer’s intellectual property, the Roald Dahl Story Company was acquired by Netflix in 2021 with the goal of bringing his stories and characters to more fans around the world in exciting new ways. The Roald Dahl Story Company and Netflix brand teams wanted a new visual identity that would help support their goal to build a global storytelling franchise across films and series, publishing, games, immersive experiences, live theater, consumer products and more.
The identity builds on the brand idea, “We champion mischievous and inventive storytelling.” Pentagram’s design brief was to create a visual language that was rooted in the heritage of the stories but feels bold and contemporary. Dahl’s tales are known for embracing all sorts of tonal shifts––from warm and silly nonsense, to the dark and macabre, to biting humor and wordplay. The program needed a built-in flexibility to accommodate this range as well as three separate targeted audiences––preschool, family, and adults.
The new logotype makes “Roald Dahl” and “Story Company” equally prominent. It is designed to carefully balance light and joy with darkness and mischief. The approach includes variations like a “logofied” version of the author’s name that can be incorporated into existing campaigns for evergreen IP like the long-running musical “Matilda.”
The distinctive typography of the logo comes to life in the full custom typeface, Fantastic Mr. Font, which can shift to convey the different tones in the stories. Pentagram collaborated with the foundry Pangram Pangram to customize their existing font PP Acma, taking its playful and unique characteristics and making it more mischievous. The large character set comes alive with alternate versions for most letters, with flourishes, swashes and loops, curiously shaped counters and bowls, or letters that are tilted, flipped or leaning. The type is sharper and sleeker in the adult branding, where the more “well-behaved” characters are used.
The flexibility carries through to the brand palette, which is composed of vibrant hues that draw from the original book covers, objects like the Peach and the Golden Ticket, and characters like The Enormous Crocodile. They also nod to Dahl’s fantastical vocabulary, with names like Razztwizzler Red, Bibbling Blue and Squizzle Yellow. The large palette can be used to differentiate categories for the various audiences––from a full rainbow for preschool, to a broader spectrum for family, to a more neutral palette with black and white for adults
The designers used Fantastic Mr. Font to create a library of graphic elements, incorporating playful patterns and bold backgrounds that can be used on their own or alongside Quentin Blake’s illustrations, which have long been associated with Dahl’s stories. Additionally, a set of illustrations was created around the book at the base of the logo, referencing quintessential elements from Dahl’s stories, such as a golden ticket, peach, and birds carrying strings.
The identity will roll out gradually across the full estate including publishing. The colorful and cohesive system helps bring to life Dahl’s delightfully off-kilter storytelling at its most swashboggling, lickswishy, flushbunking best.
