Brief:

E-Sports in 2020 is a quickly growing industry that has already been established in Europe, Asia and the US for a few years now. However, it is yet to become as popular and mainstream in Australia, with smaller events and E-Sports teams emerging more and more in the past few years.

The client contact me in order to brand a large scale E-Sports event to be held in Sydney. It was boasting a large prize pool, overwhelming amounts of pre registered entrants and the lavish UNSW Roundhouse venue.

All it needed was an appropriate and exciting brand strategy and visual identity.

Solution:

The conceptual idea was based on a beautiful anecdote that I heard from a professional E-Sports player who talked about the mystery of how the mysterious worlds and characters in video games, allowed people to escape their day to day lives and immerse in engaging stories. It also gave them the ability to find like-minded communities and have a paying career, all thanks to these “ghosts in the machine”.

This illusive and mysterious side of video games became the backbone of what would help form the visual identity; a brand filled with mystery.

This mysterious concept took shape in the form of “Phantom”, the perfect name for a mystifying and enigmatic visual identity. Phantom featured a neo-retro aesthetic based on 80’s and 90’s video game and pop culture design cues. This would enable it to have that nostalgic and sightly strange look and feel.

Credits:

Videographer - William Slingsby
Photographer - Steve Andreou