I recently spoke with illustrator and long-time button customer Julien Chung. Julien’s been making buttons with Busy Beaver since 2005 and you can always bet that when his new order comes in it’ll be the brightest, most colorful designs of the day. Julien uses his buttons to advertise his work to potential clients. Below he talks about how buttons work as the perfect little giveaway.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a designer and illustrator in Montreal, Canada and I license my characters to manufacturers around the world. My designs can be found on beer glasses, coffee mugs, umbrellas, chocolate packaging and many other items in Europe and Japan.

What’s the story behind your latest buttons?

I designed these as giveaways for my agent’s booth at the Licensing International Expo coming up in Las Vegas. The buttons showcase a couple of my characters with simple positive words to uplift the wearer. The square format is unusual and attractive, not to mention that people pin them on right away and walk around the show with them. Also they are small enough to pack in a suitcase that is already full of catalogs, bags and t-shirts. The competition is tough as I am going up against Disney and Hello Kitty and Paul Frank to name just a few. All of these companies have huge budgets and lots of promotional items to give away to potential licensees but I haven’t seen many original pins. Last year I created a set of six small and very cute animal character pins. They were like little gems and went very quickly.


Why do you make your buttons with Busy Beaver?

I have been using BBBC’s buttons for many years now. The excellent quality and special shapes make the buttons a great promotional item for me. People love to wear them and love it when they have a choice of designs. The fact that I can order small quantities of several designs at good prices is big plus.

 

Thanks to Julien for sharing his button story with us! You can check out more of his work here.

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