Moomin

How do you meaningfully celebrate 80 years of one of the world's most carefully guarded fictional universes? That’s the brief the Moomin team dropped on our desk. 

As a family-run business overseen by Tove Jansson's great-niece, every element of the brand is protected with extraordinary care. Characters can't be separated from their lore, visual elements must match Tove's original hand-crafted style, and the storytelling needs to honor the specific tone of voice that has defined Moomin for eight decades.

They wanted to engage fans in celebration, but in a way that invited genuine participation rather than passive consumption. The goal was pretty ambitious: create something that would honor the anniversary while pushing creative boundaries within the strict confines of the Moomin world.

Moomin had the initial idea of running a competition to make the anniversary participatory. What was unclear to them was how to exhibit the submissions and make the entire experience feel immersive and inspiring to the artists and viewers alike.

The project kicked off with three intensive workshops where we explored different directions we could take this in. Rather than settling for a conventional gallery, we pushed for something that could better reflect Moomin's nature.

The winning concept emerged from a simple observation: Moominvalley has always had plenty of unexplored space. While fans know the iconic Moominhouse and key locations from the stories, there's room for imagination. We proposed creating a new map of Moominvalley where fans could contribute their own interpretations of what other houses in the valley might look like, building a collaborative geography of the beloved world.

This idea helped check multiple boxes. It created genuine fan engagement, provided fresh content for the anniversary year, and offered Moomin a flexible platform for ongoing marketing and social strategies.

The project scope was essentially a full campaign website for the 80th anniversary, with the interactive map serving as the centerpiece that would bring everything together.

The website centered on an illustrated map where visitors could explore both canonical Moomin locations and fan-contributed houses. The technical execution required careful balance between creative ambition and practical constraints, especially as the number of entires significantly exceeded our expectations. As more submissions came in, we needed to expand the map several times — and the final map illustration ended up being 14400x8000 pixels. The size and the complexity of the illustration was approaching the limits of the illustration software.

Educational materials were also included as part of the website, with downloadable resources for schools, including craft assignments and teaching materials. This extended the project's reach beyond the core fanbase into educational settings, introducing new audiences to the Moomin universe.