A London company that represents illustrators and makes films.

Jelly is a London-based animation, design and production company. Trade titles that reported on it in February 2019, including Post Magazine, Stash and SHOOT, all said that it was launched in London in 2002, and that it works as both a production company and an artist management agency. The same reports name Chris Page as Jelly’s co-founder and partner. In a 2014 news item, shots referred to the company as Jelly London.

The double model is the core of the brand. On one side, Stash reported in 2019, Jelly represents directors and creators who make animation and motion graphics for brands. On the other, it represents illustrators and designers who work with brands on print, digital and outdoor advertising campaigns and who also supply editorial illustration to the media. In the release carried by Stash on 19 February 2019, Page described Jelly’s dual role as a production company and an illustration agency that treats both disciplines with equal seriousness, and said the company was able to cross-reference its creative capabilities.

That idea explains how Jelly talks about campaigns. Page said in the same release that Jelly often handles integrated packages for clients, combining still images for print and outdoor sites with motion work for television, the web and mobile. He said there is rarely a campaign that is purely one medium these days, and that Jelly can deliver a suite of assets across the board. For a brand built on representation, the point is that one roster and one production team can cover a poster and a television spot for the same brief.

The name itself is short and informal, and the company’s own people describe its manner in the same register. Its producer Eri Panasci told the trade press in 2019 that the Jelly approach was “playful yet competent”: the team did not take itself too seriously, she said, but it got things done and did them well, and was known for craft and solutions.

KITCHEN, the in-house animation studio.

Jelly’s production side includes its own studio. In the February 2019 release, Page described the company as using the talent on its roster together with its full-service in-house animation studio, named KITCHEN, to deliver complete campaigns. KITCHEN appears in the credits of Jelly’s own work: Stash listed “Hot House”, a television commercial for Virgin Mobile co-directed by Design Lad and KITCHEN, among the company’s recent projects.

The same report listed two other projects, which show how Jelly works with outside directors and agencies. One was “SOHO”, an animated short for the shared workspace company Fora and the London agency Anyways, directed by Niceshit. The other was “Escape”, a spot for the outdoor clothing company Berghaus, directed by Em Cooper for the agency VCCP, using the director’s hand-painted technique. Stash also reported that Jelly had produced campaigns for agencies including 72andSunny, Mother, Droga5, BBH, Wieden + Kennedy and Publicis, working with both their American and European offices.

The illustration side has its own lead. The 2019 reports named Nicki Field as Jelly’s head of illustration, and said she would travel to New York in March that year with Panasci for a series of meetings and screenings. Panasci said the company would show print portfolios alongside showreels when it met agencies and clients, and that the illustration artists would be available to American clients alongside the motion work.

Signings are announced as news in the trade press. shots reported on 2 June 2014 that Jelly London had signed New Future Group, a multi-disciplinary agency fronted by its co-founder Marcus Walters, and the American illustrator Pat Perry. In February 2019, Stash reported that Jelly had signed the New York animation team ROOF to a representation agreement for the UK market. Each of these moves fits the same pattern: an agency that adds both still and moving image makers to one list.

A London house with a New York outpost.

Illustration agencies and type platforms sell other people’s work, so their own identity has a peculiar job: it has to stay in the background while still being recognisable. For an agency, the name is often the most important design decision. Some take a founder’s name, some a playful noun, some a plain description of what they do, and each choice sets a tone before a single portfolio image loads. The roster itself then becomes part of the brand. Which artists an agency represents, how their work is grouped and how evenly it is presented all say something about the house’s taste.

Type platforms face a similar problem with fonts. A marketplace or specimen site has to present many designers’ typefaces in a consistent frame, so the platform’s own wordmark, interface type and colour usually stay quiet. Specimen pages, sample sentences, filters and test-drive tools carry much of the character.

For both kinds of business, the website is the main brand surface. Navigation, image cropping, grid spacing and the tone of short biographies do the work that packaging does for a consumer product, and a redesign of the site is often the moment the identity visibly changes.

London, then a full-time presence in New York.

The company crossed the Atlantic in 2019. Post Magazine, Stash and SHOOT all reported on 19 February 2019 that Jelly had launched a full-time presence in New York, led by its senior creative producer Eri Panasci as executive producer. The reports said Panasci, who grew up in Connecticut and studied at Boston University, had worked in New York, San Francisco and London for media and advertising companies including McCann and Vice Media, and had joined Jelly in London in 2016, overseeing design and production work for clients such as Virgin Media, Google, Nespresso, McDonald’s and Bombay Sapphire.

Page explained the decision in the release. “We’ve been thinking about this and talking about it for some time,” he said, adding that Jelly had been eager to work more closely with its American network. He said that having an American on the management team who wanted to lead the move, and who could reconnect with her own network of clients and colleagues, made it an easier decision, and he described the opening as a chance to be in the clients’ backyard. Panasci said she would be able to give American clients a deeper level of service from New York than from London, and to combine that with the Jelly model and culture.

For representation on the American east coast, the reports said Jelly had lined up James Bartlett of Mr. Bartlett. Panasci said the US operation would focus initially on motion work, while still offering the company’s illustrators, and that the team was keen on large briefs that cover a television commercial, the outdoor campaign that goes with it and shorter content for social media and the web. The 2019 reports described the company as London-based, with New York added as a second presence.

For a design guide, Jelly shows how an agency can make its two halves, still illustration and moving image, part of one identity rather than two separate brands, and talk about both in the same plain, playful voice. Compare Handsome Frank and Central Illustration Agency, two other London illustration agencies in this collection. For this guide we use pink, blush, plum and black with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Jelly’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.