The biggest potential in the design package comes from the ’emoticons’, a population of graphic creatures who, as main protagonists, bring a current news topic to life in an explanatory animated sequence lasting several minutes. Modular figures, props and labels based on a pictogram character set have been conceived here with the aim of providing the ZDF crew with a design toolkit for daily production. Creation of the basic figure of an individual emoticon, for instance, requires only a few stackable props from one of the libraries prepared in advance by Velvet (e.g. facial expressions, hats, clothing, tools, etc.). The fact that the libraries can be combined means that the main character plus supporting roles for the explanatory sequence can be very quickly delivered. Combining …