If you want to get a job with a big organization,
you need to show them that you can solve their problems and
generally one of their big problems is
"how do we make ourselves stand out from the people that we're competing against".
Hello YouTube this is a re-recording of a lecture I presented at the PXL University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Belgium.
So today we’re talking about the full guide to master branding in esports
and how to get a full time job at your favorite organization.
I made a quick rundown of the topics we were going over today,
there are some time stamps in the description, starting with some background about myself,
what I’m actually going to be teaching,
some observations on the industry,
the importance of social media,
as well as how to actually strategize for these brands yourself,
and a few tips and tricks I've picked up on in the past decade that I've been in esports.
I’m going to do quite a bit of cross referencing in this presentation
so make sure to listen through as much as you can
if you’re really interested in mastering esports design and branding.
Some quick background on where I work,
currently I am a graphic & motion designer for 100 Thieves,
an esports, gaming, and apparel organization
with over one million followers on youtube, instagram, tiktok and hopefully soon, twitter as well.
I’m also a brand designer for Paper Crowns,
an award winning agency that was recently given the title of Esports Creative Team of the Year for 2020,
by the very well recognized esports awards platform.
And lastly I have my personal brand, Nowack Design,
which is centered around teaching the psychology of design to creatives specifically in esports,
and how to get people to better understand their work, their process, and the industry.
So now that I’ve gone through the background of what I do, this is what I’m going to be teaching today—
and that is “How to become an esports designer in 2020”,
and the brand standards or strategy you’ll need to get hired, get paid,
and all that good stuff, right, so—
I thought it would make sense to talk a little bit about the industry
and the comparisons that I’ve been able to make in this past decade of being in the esports creative community.
So there are a few main points I wanted to bring up about the design industry,
the first being that it is still new,
it hasn’t been around as long as traditional sports
and because of that, i would say that it is still underdeveloped
but has been quickly catching up in recent times, so—
What I’ve noticed back in 2012 to 2014 was that esports generally had no identity
and no specific visual style.
And because of that, would take from traditional sports graphics from things like football and other sports television networks.
But in recent times, these brands and these organizations,
as well as the industry as a whole has been able to develop its own style and visual language
which I'll be showing off some examples in a bit.
Going back to this idea that esports is a growing industry,
it is also evolving and the pace in which it’s evolving in is moving much faster than it used to.
That being said, it’s important to stay involved in the community,
esports is very tightly knit and the network of the industry is actually a lot smaller than you would probably think.
The last note and maybe the most important one to keep in mind is that the esports industry has become profitable.
So back in 2012,
most of the community was doing this purely for fun,
there was rarely any pay involved,
and the reason for that was that the industry had barely any money in it,
hardly anyone in creative fields or in marketing got paid, and—
and the premise of why this was okay was because for most of us,
it was just a hobby and we were exploring our craft, finding out what we loved to do
and if we wanted to eventually make this a career in the future, so—
Obviously things have changed dramatically since then,
and esports has become this multi billion dollar industry that is still on the rise every day.
Now, as esports has become more profitable,
it’s especially important for these brands to separate themselves from their competitors.
So I have some examples of social media graphics from a few of my favorite teams.
100 Thieves, Chaos Esports Club, Sentinels, Evil Geniuses, Luminosity and Dignitas.
And going back to these previous points, so growing, developing a style, becoming profitable,
what you’ll see here as I mentioned earlier is that over time,
esports organizations have come to understand the importance of branding and distancing their
own unique visual style from their competitors.
but what you’ll notice is that the main goal for an organization is to develop its own personality,
similar to how youtubers, content creators
and streamers have a specific personality that ties in to their brand.
Whether it’s the colors, the visual language,
or even in chaos esports club in the lime green towards the center
with their very unique typography style,
most of these graphics have refined their brands into something that is
completely exclusive from other traditional sports industries.
Like I said earlier, esports would mimic these industries back in 2012-2014
and because of that, most brands back then looked exactly the same,
they all held the same personality,
and now we’re starting to see a break from that trend.
And this is kind of what I’ve been leading into,
so the importance of social media
and why all this stuff is relevant.
So we were looking at social media graphics earlier, and—
I was explaining why each of these organizations have their own style and unique look to them.
And the reason why social media graphics especially are so important to these companies
can be seen in the massive following that almost all of them seem to share.
When you look at these teams, so I just pulled a few like Fnatic, 100 Thieves obviously, Cloud9, Liquid, and—
it doesn’t just stop here, there are TONS of organizations that have followings just like this if not larger.
And the reason why it’s like this is because as a business,
these platforms are the best way for these brands to actively engage and communicate
with an audience that is almost entirely online and on social media in the first place.
But going back, that’s kind of the overall importance of these brands separating themselves.
Imagery and visuals are such a big part of social media strategy
and if you’re going to become a designer or creative,
you’ll need to be able to strategize how you can build onto these social media accounts
and give them their own personalities and styles.
And that’s what I’m going to talk about right here! So…
Making it and how to actually design and strategize for these esports brands
and more specifically the standards you can expect
when you want to create successful esports graphics.
This is very important for individuals looking to get hired and I say this all the time on my streams is that—
if you want to get a job with a big organization,
you need to show them that you can solve their problems and—
generally one of their big problems is
“how do we make ourselves stand out from the people we’re competing against”.
Currently in 2020, there is a huge gap in those that communicate
versus those that decorate their ideas and in esports I’m just telling you now,
if you want to quickly get ahead,
I always encourage you to learn more about communicating your design strategy,
and to do it now while the industry is still catching up.
So some of the key points I think about when I’m making graphics and I’m strategizing for these organizations
is that it should be memorable, recognizable, eye-catching, and different.
Most of these tie in together but making it memorable, allowing the viewer to make a connection that this style,
this specific visual language has an attachment to this brand’s name.
At the same time, making it recognizable, so what I’m doing is I’m imagining the viewers perspective, and—
Ill bring this up a few times during the presentation from this point on,
something that’s really important is—
putting yourself in the shoes of a person that is scrolling through their timeline on social media.
Like I said, it’s the main way esports gets involved with its audience, and—
If you picture someone scrolling through their phone
and they see a graphic that tells them without them having to read it and they say:
“oh ok, I know that this is something about 100 Thieves”.
That’s generally the approach you try to have when you're making these graphics is—
“How can I design something that people will see and eventually associate with a certain brand”.
At the same time it needs to be eye-catching,
and going back to that similar idea that if you’re scrolling through a timeline,
it needs to be something that gets people to pause what they’re doing.
The last point here, like I said most of these tie in together
but making sure that the design and that the style is different,
making sure that you’re creating something that is unique.
And in order to do all these previous points,
you need to create something that doesn’t mimic the styles of competitors
or what is already seen in the community.
These things will seem very obvious at first
but anyone who is already a part of the esports community will be able to agree with me,
there is a lot of copying done here and I’m telling you again
if you want to jump ahead as quickly as possible,
you’ll try to avoid that trap as much as possible in the first place.
Going back to these,
if you remember all of the previous points so memorable, recognizable, eye-catching and different.
These social media graphics, you’ll see that they all touch on those points and I can try and spot out a few right now, so—
For example, in the top center Chaos Esports Club with their really vibrant colors and unique serif typography style
that you don't see very often in esports.
Evil Geniuses with their super unique color palette. Their very bold, eye-catching typography.
For 100 Thieves we focus a lot on our imagery,
so using geometric shapes as background elements,
using small type as texture rather than having the typography take the center stage for
most of our graphics and I’ll get into that a little bit more specifically later on.
But yeah, if you think about—
those main points and look to some of your favorite esports brands,
they’re probably all hitting those goals.
So that’s generally how you make it, and—
now I wanted to move onto some of my favorite tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the past 10 years
which I’m very excited to show all of these to you today, so—
The main points that I’ve picked up on for the esports industry just to run through the list is that
sometimes its better to have something that’s different than good.
Emotional based design which is,
probably the most important thing that I teach to others.
How to create a brand that triggers specific emotions and gets people reacting a certain way
Also, something that I call categorizing in design which has its own psychological effects that I can show you.
And just a cool little trick to end it off on is reflected graphics
and a really quick way to make your designs feel different from the last one.
So we’ll get into this first idea, that it’s better to be different than it is to be good.
I feel like it’s the opposite for most industries,
a lot of long-standing businesses like to play it safe
and just focus on being the highest quality possible even if it’s not entirely creative.
But the esports industry is still new and still growing,
it’s separating itself from other industries and—
because of that it has different circumstances.
Like I said, esports is so community based, so a lot of designers and creatives have been here just as long
if not longer than I've been.
And I feel very comfortable in saying that the general skill level of design in esports is well beyond most other industries,
just because, the people in it like myself started when they were 10-12 years old and—
have nearly a decade of experience in one specific industry.
Another issue that comes with this however,
is that because esports is so tightly knit, there is a lot of copying, a lot of “taking inspiration” from other designers, and—
it’s gotten to the point where although the general skill level and quality has improved over time
and it's been getting better and better,
there’s also a lot of generic “esports styles” that you’ll see from people over and over and over again.
What I’m kind of getting at here is there’s a lot of designers in esports that make work that is good,
but NOT a lot of designers in esports that make work that is different. So you see the potential for opportunity in there?
The people that do things differently are solving the problem of these organizations
when it comes to standing out from their competitors,
but there is less availability of those types of designers in the industry.
So if you want to quickly make your way to the top,
get creative first and slowly improve your craft and the quality of your work over time.
This next tip is something I am super super passionate about
and it's something I learned in university called emotional based design.
Anyone that is into branding should know the importance of brands having a personality,
and when i say brand personality i literally mean the brand should express emotions, it should be sad, angry, happy.
And this is something again that is not seen very often in esports because it's still a new industry
and people are having to make that connection compared to these...
really refined, long-standing professional industries.
If you’re interested in becoming a designer or creative in esports,
this is something that will easily separate yourself from the people that you’re competing against
when it comes to getting these jobs.
Here’s what I’m talking about when I say emotional based design.
So I’m being thoughtful on how I approach a design direction based on the context of the situation.
Just as few examples here, so these are some graphics we use for our live events.
And the main thing you’ll notice is that 100 thieves our main branding is red/black/white,
and we’ll use that to our advantage when we create our marketing strategy for these matches.
So you’ll see that the ones in black and white are a lot more neutral,
and on the other side, we’ll use a burst of red for our graphics
to identify a big win and to give off this emotion of high energy and celebration.
You know, this is something that we really want to make pop out in our timeline, so—
now when someone is scrolling through, they’ll see this composition of bright red
and they'll know that something good must have happened.
And these are all micro decisions that happen very very quickly
and are mostly not thought about,
but if you can slow things down and consider each step
of how the viewer is going to react to your design,
you’ll be able to create a full brand strategy that is
built around the audience of that organization,
and that’s something that esports teams love to hear about.
It’s the same idea for win versus loss graphics, so—
try to be thoughtful about how you want your graphics to represent a win versus how you want them to look for a loss.
For 100 Thieves we actually don't create loss graphics at all,
because we don’t feel it’s important to highlight those moments, you know,
they aren’t really meant to get people’s attention in the first place, so—
So that’s kind of emotional based design and as long as you
hold onto that type of thinking while you design you’ll do very, very well in esports.
So next up here’s something I call categorizing in design for esports, and—
this is important because of the impact of social media like I had said earlier,
and more specifically, the amount of content that all these teams have to put out on a daily basis.
So whether it’s a variety of different competitive games,
content for youtubers and streamers, or—
even just celebratory occasions like birthdays and really any announcements from the organization as a whole,
there is a lot of different groups of information for the viewer to have to digest.
What we can do to make that information easier to understand, and also how to direct it really quickly, is—
by using visual cues in our graphics to lead people
to understanding the context of the image before even needing to read anything.
So I’ve got a couple more graphics from 100 Thieves here and—
to kind of emphasize this point, you’ll notice that these are for two different game categories,
the left being Counter Strike and the right being Valorant,
and you can see that although these graphics look similar enough to be identified under the same brand,
they’re styled just differently enough to be grouped into kind of their own sub-styles,
and have slightly different design elements that separate them from each other.
So the idea here, going back to the viewer’s perspective,
is that we can train the eyes to recognize these patterns,
so someone who’s seen 100 Thieves before can scroll to one of these images,
and just through the overall layout can say to themselves:
“oh, this looks like a counter-strike graphic” or “this looks like a valorant graphic”, right?
And this all relates to brand recognition, and—
how to make the content of the brand easier to digest for the viewer.
And I’ve got two more examples here to reiterate this idea,
so on the left side for our birthday graphics, you see how we use the colors of the photography
and clip it to that person’s name.
And we generally save exclusively for graphics that highlight certain people.
And on the other side, if we use a photo of the entire team
it’s generally due to a big win, and—
you can also see some of the other brand elements coming into play at the same time such as the—
bright red or the large typography hovering over the back of the players to
highlight the importance of the graphic for the viewer.
But that pretty much covers categorizing in esports design, so—
Now I’m going to move into our last tip, and—
this something very very quick but it can help a lot and it’s something I still don’t see being done very often
despite being so simple and that is reflecting graphics or imagery in a design.
You’ll see in these examples that it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like,
and it’s this idea of taking the imagery used in a graphic,
and flipping it to the other side as a way to diversify and reset the information on the composition.
The reason why this is really important is if you think about the context of social media again,
and recognize that the graphics you’re making aren’t going to be seen one by one,
they are often going to be strung together in this infinite timeline,
this is a really easy way to prevent your designs from looking repetitive or lazy
when they're being posted on top of one another, right?
And here’s kind of what I mean by that.
So at first glance when you take a look at these social media feeds,
they’ll seem diverse enough to not give off the feeling of being repetitive or copy/pasted from the previous graphics.
But when you look closer at each one, you’ll notice that a lot of the elements are the same,
but have just been reversed to the opposite side to help reset the viewer’s eyes,
and make it harder to connect any similarities between the two.
And since these graphics stick on social media,
you’ll need to be thoughtful of how they all interact with each other, which—
is why I always encourage designers to create two variations of their graphics with
reflected layouts whenever they have the ability to do something like that.
So we’re coming up on the end of the presentation,
here were the points we talked about and again for YouTube the timestamps will be marked throughout the video,
this has been how to become an esports designer in 2020.
You can find me just about anywhere @nowackdesign. I’m live on Twitch every Saturday at 2 PM PST
teaching content similar to what you’ve seen just now.
Thank you all for watching, I hope it helped, and I’ll see you in the next video.