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Palace Museum Cat Cultural Product
Within the quiet palace, a single cat rules the place.
Client
Product Type
Design Objectives
IP Development System
Innovation Insights
Project Background
In the era of mass tourism, consumers increasingly seek culturally distinctive and emotionally meaningful souvenirs to share with friends and family. Although the Palace Museum offers a wide variety of cultural and creative products, the assortment is often fragmented and lacks truly compelling items that meet mainstream consumer needs. Against this backdrop, the Palace Museum partnered with the LKK Design team to jointly develop an exclusive cultural IP identity and a series of culturally inspired products aligned with modern aesthetic preferences.
Innovation Upgrade
The project focuses on abstracting and refining the “Palace Cat” into a more defined IP character with strong storytelling, cultural continuity, and innovative expression, enhancing its vitality as a brand IP. Based on the Palace Cat archetype, a series of derivative products are developed to ensure strong contextual relevance, user experience, and adaptability, ultimately positioning them as a preferred souvenir choice for museum visitors.
Design Strategy
Market Research
The LKK team conducted on-site field research at the Palace Museum in the early stage, combined with visitor persona analysis. Based on these insights, they systematically organized and categorized the Palace Museum’s products and consolidated its cultural collections.
Using a CBD (Collaborative Brain Design) co-creation model, over 400 designers across the entire group participated in the project. Within 52 days, they developed 17 themed concepts and more than 800 product designs. The “Palace Cat” was created through this collaborative innovation process.
Design Inspiration
Through a multi-dimensional and multi-perspective exploration of the Palace Museum’s cultural relics and architecture, it was discovered that cats not only help eliminate rodent problems, but also carry auspicious meanings in traditional culture. Cats and butterflies are homophonous with the phrase “耄耋” (mào dié), which symbolizes longevity, and are often used as subjects in traditional paintings.
As a result, cats have long been regarded as symbols of good fortune. They are widely loved in folk culture and were also commonly seen within imperial courts — the Forbidden City being no exception.
💡 Solution
- With the fall of dynasties and the passage of time, the Palace Cats continue to “guard” the Forbidden City in a new form today. Against this backdrop, the Palace Cats were abstracted and refined to enhance their narrative depth, cultural continuity, and innovative expression, strengthening their vitality as a cultural IP.
- Based on the Palace Cat archetype, a series of derivative product designs were developed, emphasizing contextual relevance, user experience, and adaptability.
- The Palace Cat series has now expanded to nearly 200 SKUs in production and has been launched on the Palace Museum’s official Tmall flagship store, becoming the only IP-driven product line of its kind. It has also opened the only themed experiential retail store within the Palace Museum. In addition, a uniquely designed intelligent robot based on the Palace Cat IP has been deployed in the Palace Cat Lifestyle Hall, providing visitor consultation services. These initiatives have brought renewed vitality and dynamism to the traditionally historical image of the Palace Museum.
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