The Bugg Report recently had the chance to sit down and speak to Erin Killingback from My Legendary Creative. Having spent 15 years in the Licensed Consumer Products industry in Australia, Erin has recently started her own Freelance Design business.
Erin, for those who don’t know; can you tell us a little bit about your background in the industry?
I consider myself a bit of a veteran at this point with 15 years experience in the Licensed Consumer Products industry in Australia. I started out my career as a designer with Funtastic Limited where I discovered my love of entertainment brands. Those were the days when Funtastic held all the licenses across all categories so it was an amazing training ground in product, packaging and marketing design. From there I freelanced for many Consumer Products companies in Melbourne including Headstart, TMI, Mitch Dowd & Kmart, until I went to work for The Walt Disney Company in a product development role. This was my first role working for a licensor looking after product approvals and creative direction for the Hard-lines categories across the Disney, Disney/Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars brands for four and half years. I have just recently moved on from Mattel after two and half years where I was the Consumer Products Creative Manager, overseeing the Barbie, Hot Wheels, Thomas, Monster High, Fisher Price and Gaming brands across both the Hard-lines and Soft-lines categories. I’ve been fortunate enough to have experience on both the licensee and licensor side of product development and design which has been a huge advantage for me in my career and an insight that I can now share with clients.
What are the main areas that you have worked on in the creative business?
The areas have been really diverse from licensed product and packaging design across Soft-lines categories such as apparel, footwear, bags, accessories & homewares to hard-lines categories such as stationery, activity arts & crafts, FMCG, party-ware, celebrations, toys & sporting goods. To marketing collateral such as posters, brochures, catalogues, print ads, digital assets and retail point of sale. I’ve spent an extensive amount of time working with style guides and licensed product approval processes from both sides and more recently in my role with Mattel presenting the creative direction to licensees in the industry.
You have a new business now, My Legendary Creative; can you tell us about the business and the services that you offer?
I am really excited to be back working for myself and keen to share my extensive licensed product and global brand experience with the industry. My services cover product & packaging, retail point of sale, marketing collateral, digital assets, presentation, style guide, logo and print design. Other services outside of design are in-house consultations reviewing design admin work flows and approval processes, product approval administration & market trend research.
In terms of work you have done; can you share some of the highlights from your portfolio?
I’ve been so lucky to work on some of the best global entertainment brands in my career so far and have so many highlights but I think Disney’s 2013 & 2014 Showcases where I got to design the look and feel of the presentation, to the artwork on the posters at the cinema and the brand information packs is up there. Then just recently at Mattel I designed a Barbie furniture range for Fantastic Furniture that went in store last year and it had an amazing sell through which was a real buzz. These highlights and more are up on my website here.
For anyone, or any business that would be interested in working with you; how can they get in touch with you?
You can send through an email to erin@mylegendarycreative.com.au and we can chat about how we can work together on your next project. You can also follow my page on Facebook here, where I share local and global licensed product collaboration news from a creative perspective. You also visit my website here, to view my portfolio. I look forward to hearing from you!
