I’m so excited to finally reveal my latest project for PCHA! Earlier this year, they asked if I could come up with a child-friendly mascot for the organization—and they had settled on the idea of an owl. They wanted him to be cute and soft, restricted to just a few colors, and include the PCHA logo. I illustrated a few options, incorporating the logo of course, but also using the curves of the heart to inform the forms of the owl’s body, you’ll notice it in the beak and wings especially. After a few tweaks, we had this little guy finalized! After a contest was held to name him, I’d like to introduce: Echo!
While he’s being used in various collateral (I even added sneakers in one iteration, so he could represent a 5k!), the most exciting version of Echo is that he now exists in 3D! A company took my illustration and brought it to life as a squishy stuffed animal. Several thousand of them have been distributed to children affected by CHD to comfort them while undergoing the barrage of surgeries and treatments that typically follow a diagnosis.
Kristin Joiner 