The Pleasant Company, which has been producing American Girl dolls since 1986, was created despite Barbie, which the company’s owner Pleasant Rowland declared to be the epitome of bad taste. A teacher by education, with the help of toys she wanted to tell little girls stories about the adventures of heroines living in different eras and motivate them to get an education and become more self-confident.
Pleasant T. Rowland began producing dolls at the age of 43, investing her savings from the sale of her reading books. Initially, the dolls were conceived solely as a supplement to the books – so that each girl, after reading the textbook, could immediately play with the story.
Her first dolls were three young cute girls: each one related to a certain stage of American history and had unique features and a rich biography: Molly McIntire – a little girl who lived during the World Wars (1940s) who loved to dance and draw attention to herself; Kirsten Larson – a brave and hard-working girl, the daughter of early settlers developing Minnesota’s land in the mid-19th century; and Samantha Parkington is a mischievous girl, the daughter of wealthy parents and an orphan who lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in New York City, where she was raised by her grandmother. Later, the line of historical characters was expanded.
The birth of each of these American Girl dolls is preceded by a huge amount of painstaking research work by costume historians and sociologists. As a result, a girl doll is born that reproduces the image of its historical prototype to the smallest detail. Today, the American Girl line of historical dolls includes 8 girls: Addy, Caroline, Josefina, Julie & Ivy, Kaya, Kit & Ruthie, Marie-Grace & Cecile, and Rebecca.
In addition to historical dolls, the company also produces modern toys. The brand regularly releases a doll of the year, which is sold until December 31, and then goes into the category of collectible toys and its production is stopped. And the highlight of American Girl is the doll, whose image and appearance can be made up by yourself.
In 2001, Pleasant T. Rowland sold the company to her main competitor, Mattel, the Barbie doll company, and returned to education, founding in 2003 the Rowland Reading Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving the quality of reading instruction for elementary school children. Mattel continued to build on the idea by expanding the product line to include Bitty Baby and Bitty Twins.
What is American Girl?
American Girl is the name of a famous doll brand founded by Pleasant Company in 1986. In addition to the dolls themselves, which are popular with girls of different ages, the brand’s assortment includes toy clothing, shoes, accessories, and even doll furniture.
In terms of visual identity, the American Girl’s history can be split into two main periods: the Pleasant Company and the Mattel one. The badges from the two eras are completely different in both style and mood.
The original logo of the American Girl brand was based on a tender image in a traditional style and the Pleasant Company lettering, accompanying it. It was a horizontally oriented rectangular banner, drawn in a warm chocolate-brown and white color palette. The main part was taken by the brown silhouette of a girl reading a book, with the white doll overlapping her body.
The redesign of 1998 dramatically changed the style of the American Girl’s visual identity. The new concept was based on a bright pink title case lettering in a traditional serif typeface, with the dots above the “I” replaced by solid five-pointed stars, slightly slanted to the left. The inscription was placed on the right from a bold and large outlined five-pointed star, drawn under the same angles as the small ones.
The logo of the brand was redesigned again in 2023, by the legendary Pentagram design bureau. The lettering kept its style but got thicker lines and normal dots above the “I”s. As for the American Girl emblem, a contoured star, it is now placed above the inscription, in between its two parts. Thus, the badge became more minimalistic, yet gained stability and strength.
The bold title case lettering from the primary logo of the American Girl brand is executed in a custom serif typeface, which is called Pleasant Serif. The closest commercial fonts to the one, used in this insignia, are Albra, BD Megalona, and Lido STFtrade, but with some significant modifications.
As for the color palette of the American Girl visual identity, it is based on a dark and intense shade of pink, the color, which is the first in the list of girly associations. It looks bright, yet at the same time tender and elegant.