Skip to content
Brett S. Traylor Creative Direction & Design

Sesame Workshop

Brett led this project during his 17-year tenure as Thinkso’s founder and executive creative director.

We worked with the design staff at Sesame Workshop to lead the editorial for the iconic educational organization’s global brand guidelines, which amounted to about 130 pages in total. We articulated their brand attributes and laid out technical specifications while prioritizing clarity of message for both the U.S. version and its global counterpart.

The cover of the Sesame Workshop Brand Book with a close up of the character Bird Bird's legs on a yellow background.

We typically wouldn’t just write somebody’s brand guidelines — especially if we didn’t design the system. But our clients were Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, and Oscar the Grouch. They don’t make bigger celebrities than that. We were just excited to be in the room.

Brett Traylor, Executive Creative DIrector, Bst.

A brand attributes page from the Sesame Workshop Brand Book with a group furry muppets side by side on a brick sidewalk.
A page from the Sesame Workshop Brand Book explaining the brand attributes real, heartfelt, simple, furry, and funny.

Thinkso’s editorial staff helped clarify and articulate Sesame’s brand attributes—the key qualities that define their unique personality and provide the backbone for the brand.

A brand attribute page from the Sesame Workshop Brand Book showing the brand attributes in action in scenes from the shows.

By further expanding the brand attributes, we were able to provide marketers with more meaningful contexts for working within the Sesame brand. Understanding how “heartfelt,” “simple,” and the other characteristics actually translate to voice and visuals is critical.

The identity elements cover pages from the Sesame Workshop Brand Book with a yellow feather on a bright red background.
The Brand Landscape Overview page from the Sesame Workshop Brand Book showing usage guideline for several brand logotypes.
The logo color guidelines page from Sesame Workshop Brand Book.
The case of character page from Sesame Workshop Brand Book showing 16 well known muppets, including Elmo and Big Bird.

While less philosophical perhaps, providing clear, practical instruction around logo usage, typography, color palette, and other visual elements is key for maintaining consistency across a global brand such as Sesame.