GOSH’s Jenny Martin and the team at Crush on creating a fresh identity for the charity’s Neverland brand

For those unaware of the ties between Peter Pan and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), what’s the connection?
Jenny Martin, Senior Brand Licensing Manager, Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity (GOSH Charity): In 1929, JM Barrie gifted the rights to his much-loved play and novelisation – Peter Pan – to GOSH. Since then, and with the help of a special amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act in 1988, GOSH and GOSH Charity have received royalties from the sale of every book published and every play and pantomime performed in the UK.

Barrie asked that we never reveal how much money the charity receives as a result, but it makes a significant contribution to the care and support we can provide to patients and their families.

Fantastic. You recently teamed with creative agency Crush to craft a new guide and visual identity for your Neverland brand. What are the key benefits that come with a refreshed, ‘ownable’ identity for Neverland?
Jenny: GOSH Charity is currently in the middle of its biggest-ever fundraising campaign. We’re looking to raise £300m to help build a new Children’s Cancer Centre – and beat cancer for more children. When planning started for this ambitious capital project, we knew we had an amazing asset in Peter Pan. We needed to develop this in such a way that it was owned by GOSH Charity and therefore fully beneficial to us, while being true to the original story and the spirit of Barrie’s gift.

Most people tend to have an image in their heads of Peter Pan and Neverland. What did you build this new vision on?
Jenny: In many ways, our vision for Neverland wasn’t a new one – we wanted a world where you could easily imagine flamingos flying over lagoons and lagoons flying over flamingos, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, houses sewn of leaves and “with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed”. JM Barrie wrote the original and best description of Neverland – and this was our inspiration and our brief to Crush.

Hattie Darlington, Account Manager, Crush: We consistently help brands engage audiences through memorable experiences. This brief gave us the opportunity to draw on that expertise and envision Neverland with a fresh perspective. It gave us a unique opportunity to blend nostalgia and innovation.

Laura Simmons, Design Director, Crush: The first thing we did was make sure we really understood Neverland – the world, the characters, and the journey of the story. We wanted to dig into the magic of it and establish how we could make an audience feel, and the atmosphere we wanted to evoke. Neverland is a place of adventure, bravery and wonder so it was important that the brand and illustration style brought that to life.

Theo Bain, Illustration Director, Crush: Designing the new map of Neverland was one of the most enjoyable parts of the project. It was a true delight to fill this imaginative island with both familiar and new locations, aiming to captivate the hearts of both children and adults.

Are there any aspects of the Neverland world that you feel have perhaps been underexplored in consumer products previously, that this new guide opens up?
Jenny: I’m not sure that there are many aspects of Peter Pan product that have been left unexplored! However, what the new Neverland assets provide is an opportunity to take products in a different direction – exploring themes of nature, adventure and imagination like never before.

Finally, which categories do you see aspects of this new guide thriving in?
Jenny: The style guide includes an infant colour palette and patterns that would work very well for infant and gifting lines and product application ideas. We’ve also provided the characters as silhouettes, not just full colour imagery, so they can be used on product without embodying a particular age range.