Sanrio has tried to keep Hello Kitty up to the times: sensing a move away from Japan’s love affair with the cute, or “kawaii” aesthetic, it has pushed an edgier look for the cat in the last three years, using as much black as pink.

Sanrio也嘗試過讓Hello Kitty跟上時代潮流，比如說，在過去三年里，Sanrio在設計時已經減少了一些日本人所偏愛的“卡哇伊”的成分，多用黑色，就像以往使用粉色一樣頻繁，這樣就使得Kitty貓的形象更加出位。

Still, a sense of crisis is evident at the Tokyo offices of Sanrio, where 30 designers, led by Ms. Yamaguchi, are charged with developing new characters. At periodic product meetings, each designer presents as many as 20 characters for consideration by Ms. Yamaguchi. Of those, perhaps a dozen are chosen for trial sales at a pilot Sanrio store in Tokyo.

但是Sanrio的東京辦公處仍然彌漫著危機四伏的氣息。以山口為首的30人的設計團隊，正在努力開發新的卡通形象。在例會上，每個設計師都會提交多達20個卡通形象，供山口篩選。這當中可能會選出12個，在Sanrio位于東京的試點商店進行銷售，測試市場反應。

These days, designers are also urged to make sure their characters work across multiple media — a lesson Sanrio learned the hard way with Hello Kitty. Because Kitty had no mouth, it was difficult for the cat to break into television animation, depriving Sanrio of a lucrative source of revenue.

Sanrio還要求設計者們構思新形象時，能夠確保新形象可以通過多種媒體進行推廣——這是Sanrio在Hello Kitty身上吸取的教訓。Kitty貓沒有嘴巴，不能說話，也就與電視動畫無緣，從而斷了Sanrio公司的一條重要財路