Playing with Our Food

The Sausage Party Experiment

If you haven’t yet read our thoughts on Play in design (click to read), take a moment to check it out. We talk about why creativity thrives beyond client work and how making space for exploration leads to unexpected magic.

For those caught up (thanks for reading!), here’s another peek into the kind of work that happens when we let curiosity take the wheel. If you’ve never worked in a creative agency before, you might not know that between deep client dives, there are natural lulls. Designers need a reset before launching into the next big thing. And sometimes, an offhand comment, a sketch, or a studio joke turns into something bigger—something we just have to bring to life.

N13 Sausage Party Initial Sketches

That’s exactly how Sausage Party was born. One of our designers had a bit of extra time between projects and a personal goal to push her illustration work. So we gave her full creative freedom: no brief, no constraints, just a challenge to experiment with typography, illustration, and a themed brand. And she delivered.

What started as a quirky idea—designing a branding concept inspired by the typeface Tartuffe and fake foods—evolved into something completely different: a celebration of Something on a Stick Day (yes, it’s a real holiday). Naturally, hot dogs became the star. Using the typeface Campingo and a playful, illustration style, the project took on a life of its own. From the first sketches to the final characters, it became a studio-wide favorite, sparking laughter and admiration in equal measure.

Now we’re obsessed. We want these little hotties on everything. Do you have a favorite party member? Let us know in the comments! And as always, check out more of our work over on our website.