Brown Bag Films
Brown Bag Films | Repositioning a global animation studio for a changing industry
As the global entertainment landscape continues to fragment, established studios face growing pressure to differentiate beyond genre or age bracket. Brown Bag Films, a world-renowned animation studio with three decades of craft behind it, needed a brand system that reflected the full breadth of its creative ambition and positioned the studio clearly within a fast-moving, highly competitive market.
For Brown Bag Films, we developed the brand infrastructure to show up consistently and confidently, from a video-first website to a motion-led identity built for every screen, channel and global partner.
Founded in Dublin in 1994, Brown Bag Films is one of the world’s most technically accomplished animation studios, producing award-winning work for global broadcasters and platforms. Now part of a wider brand architecture alongside 9 Story Media Group and Scholastic, the studio operates across Dublin, Toronto and Bali.
While Brown Bag’s creative output had continued to evolve, its brand system had not kept pace. Communications skewed towards a narrower perception of the studio’s work, underplaying both the maturity of its storytelling and the diversity of audiences it now serves. In a crowded entertainment landscape shaped by platform shifts, global competition and an explosion of content, the studio needed clearer positioning and a more confident way to articulate its unique value.
Working closely with senior leadership, we undertook a brand-led transformation to define Brown Bag Films’ place in a changing industry: a creative partner recognised excellence in animation across formats, audiences and platforms.
Co-Design
Through a series of collaborative workshops, we co-created a new brand strategy that clarified Brown Bag Films’ mission, values and differentiation. This strategic foundation informed the development of a flexible, expressive brand system designed to work across digital, physical and motion-led environments.
The visual identity balances craft and clarity. Typography, colour and graphic language were designed to flex between playful, character-led moments and more composed, professional communications. A warm, grounded palette anchors the system, while allowing the studio’s diverse IPs to take centre stage without losing their individuality.
Brand in motion
Motion plays a central role in the brand experience. Animation is not treated as decoration, but as a core expression of the brand itself. The motion system enables the identity to exist confidently in three-dimensional space, reinforcing Brown Bag’s technical expertise while creating consistency across web, social and screen-based applications.
The result is a coherent, future-facing brand system that reflects the studio Brown Bag Films has always been, while positioning it clearly for what comes next. By aligning strategy, craft and execution, this repositioning equips the studio to engage global partners with confidence and continue shaping animated storytelling for audiences of all ages.
Web development
The new website was built as the primary expression of Brown Bag Films' repositioned brand, a digital home designed to do more than inform. Developed from the ground up on Drupal, the site brings the new identity to life through a video-first experience that puts the studio's creative output front and centre.
Motion is woven into the interface itself, echoing the brand's conviction that animation is not decoration but craft. A fluid, visually immersive UI guides visitors through the studio's diverse IP portfolio, giving global partners an immediate sense of Brown Bag's range and ambition. The site also serves as a platform for talent acquisition, presenting the studio as a destination for world-class animators with a voice and aesthetic that reflects the calibre of work produced across Dublin, Toronto and Bali.
Built for performance and scalability, the Drupal architecture supports a multisite model that allows individual show and spin-off sites to be spun up from a single install, giving the studio the infrastructure to grow its digital presence as its IP portfolio expands.
Atomic design
The site was built using an atomic design methodology, assembling the interface from a library of reusable, modular components. This approach ensures visual and functional consistency across every page while making the system straightforward to maintain and extend. As Brown Bag Films continues to grow its digital presence, the component library scales with it, reducing build time for future properties without compromising quality or coherence.
Accessibility
The site was developed to meet WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, ensuring it is accessible to the widest possible audience. From colour contrast and keyboard navigation to screen reader compatibility, accessibility was treated as a design requirement from the outset rather than an afterthought. For a studio whose work reaches children and families across the globe, building an inclusive digital experience was not just best practice, it was the right thing to do.
