lexikon · character design
What is Character Design?
Character Design is the craft of building a figure — its look, personality and repeatable rules — so it is instantly recognizable, memorable and consistent across every format it appears in.
— Definition by Alexander Kaminski
Character Design is the deliberate invention and shaping of a figure — form, color, silhouette, expression, personality, and the small rules that hold it together across every context. A good design is more than a nice drawing: it's a figure you can recognize by silhouette alone, whose behavior is predictable, and that you can't unsee after one look.
Alexander Kaminski treats character design as a brand tool, not decoration. At his internet IP studio KAMINSKI.WTF he builds figures like Pigeon Milk (a pigeon wearing a milk carton as a hat) and Melonski (a watermelon monster in a cap) — each with a fixed look of wobbly ink line and flat color, a clear personality, and a built-in joke. The look follows rules: on a black background the characters are drawn as off-white line-art with vivid color fills so the outline never disappears.
His principle is weird-first: the strange, unforgettable figure comes first, and the strategy is reverse-engineered to fit it. The same logic he used behind the name when rebranding Kartoffelland to "Echt vom Feld" sits behind the character here — design that makes an idea portable, likeable and worth quoting.
🔗 By Alexander Kaminski · official pages
Frequently asked — Character Design
What does character design include?
The look (form, color, silhouette), the personality, the behavior, and the fixed rules that keep the figure consistent across every format — plus, ideally, one recognizable detail or a built-in joke.
How does Alexander Kaminski design a character?
Weird-first: he starts with the strangest, most memorable idea — like a pigeon in a milk-carton hat (Pigeon Milk) — sets look rules, then reverse-engineers the personality and brand logic to fit it.