It was pretty shocking yesterday morning when a life sized chimp mascot showed up at the office. Little did we know that Chief Customer Officer Dan had secretly been working with Maydwell Mascots for about two months to make it happen!

Bear with me for a sec for a quick jaunt down memory lane. The first iteration of the MailChimp logo was quickly thrown together by Ben in 2001 using Fireworks. Over the years, each revision of the logo made it slightly less clumsy, but it still wasn’t quite right. So in late 2007 we got in touch with Jon Hicks (who designed the Firefox logo and most recently worked on the user interface design for Opera Mini 5), and he was really busy at the time. But good things come to those who wait, and by August of 2008 we had a shiny, new Freddie complete with a body and everything! (If you’re interested in reading more, check out Ben’s original post here.)

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This post has absolutely nothing to do with email marketing. But if you’re interested in graphic design and branding, you might enjoy.

I’ve been wanting to redesign the MailChimp logo since—well, since I first designed it in 2001. I kinda hacked the logo together really fast in Fireworks (which is just not meant for high-res print).  I think it went something like this. Mark, my co-founder, said: “Yo Ben, MailChimp’s live now. Um, I think it could use a logo.” Me: “Oh crap. Here, I’ve already got a monkey file open (don’t ask) so I’ll put a hat on him and send it over.”

Anyway, our beloved mascot has gone through a bunch of iterations over the years, each one slightly less clumsy than the preceding version, but I’ve never been happy with it.

Until now. That’s because this time, we went out and hired an expert.

Jon Hicks, who is probably most famous for his work on the Firefox logo (check out this interview over at Floating Frog), and most recently the SilverBack App logo, has given us an awesome new MailChimp mascot.

We’re currently working on a fresh new MailChimp website where you’ll see lots of the new branding. But for now, I thought I’d provide a sneak-peek.

Follow the link below to see Jon’s final work, and what led us to the new design.

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