Creative Allies, a Raleigh design company, is partnering with “Gilmore Girls” to create the official merchandise for the Netflix miniseries, “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.”
The original “Gilmore Girls” spanned seven seasons in seven years, from 2000 to 2007, following a mother, Lorelai, played by Lauren Graham, and her daughter, Rory, played by Alexis Bledel.
Every year, fans watched the mother-daughter duo revel in the first snowflakes of winter, eat Pop-Tarts and drink coffee at unnatural hours of the night and take part in wacky town festivities with wacky townspeople.
After the series ended, fans wanted more.
Creative Allies CEO Donald Thompson said he believes the show's intimate relationship with its fans led it to choose his company, which hosts design contests for licensed bands and brands through which fans submit artwork to be chosen for marketing campaigns.
“We create a design brief in an interactive contest with the theme that the client has chosen,” Thompson said. “This allows the client to, one, select cool art that can go into their merchandise plans, and, two, get social engagement of their fans.”
Now, through the design contest, fans can have a concrete, creative imprint on the series.
“The contest format is centered around fan engagement and user engagement,” Thompson said. “By leveraging the crowdsourcing platform, we offer world-class design at scale with expert curation.”
The contest asks artists to use a favorite character as a theme for original art and illustration submissions. Or, artists can use a provided quote from the show, such as “I need coffee in an IV” or “You’ve been Gilmored.”
