PhiEx Branding and Game Jam Promotion
The target of the project was to brand the company with a logo that reflects PhiEx's culture and personality, then to create promotional materials for their upcoming Game Jam event.
Deliverables: Branding, Business Stationery, Web Design, and Marketing Creative
Tools: Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator
About PhiEx
PhiEx (fictitious) develops mobile apps that use fascinating tales from science as jumping-off points for narrative puzzle games. Players continue thinking about the surprising facts, whimsical animation, and entertaining storytelling long after they put down their phones. PhiEx’s name and branding were influenced by Nikola Tesla: almost a mascot, his eccentric, flamboyant personality and scientific endeavors inspire the company culture. The name PhiEx comes from the controversial story of the Navy's attempt to make the USS Eldridge invisible; Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein were supposedly responsible for the science behind the Philadelphia Experiment.
Brand and Corporate Stationery
The PhiEx wordmark uses a manipulated version of the typeface Phosphate to create symmetric letters and to introduce the shapes of an AC outlet and plug (a nod to Tesla’s invention of alternating current) in the negative space between letters.
The stationery suite includes business cards, letterhead, and envelope. The electric symbol is used on the back of the business card and as a seal for the envelopes. A circuit-inspired pattern was created as a security lining on the envelopes.
The PhiEx Game Jam
The PhiEx Game Jam is an annual event where teams invent, design, and build a complete mobile game in a weekend. A two-day hackathon is followed by a demo party, where the winning game is announced and awarded $1,000. The primary audience is game developers and software engineers, likely early career. The secondary audience is designers, writers, and other mobile game contributors. In addition to driving game jam participation, the event microsite should increase game developers interested in PhiEx in general, as the game jam doubles as a recruiting event, and to drive email sign-ups to Phi-Ex newsletter. The feel should be a little nerdy, humorous, casual, pop culture-y, and playful. Inside jokes can connect to the audience and add legitimacy, but be careful not to be patronizing.
Game Jam Event Website
The Game Jam event uses eye-catching neon colors, with the brand’s bright pink at center stage. 8-bit imagery ties references the themes of pop culture and history that are core to the company’s identity, and ties to the retro gaming motifs at the demo party. Because the microsite has a very short lifespan and most users would only visit once or twice, the site could be really over the top in terms of colors and imagery. The design aims to evoke the feeling of being in an arcade with lights, noise, and bustling excitement.
Scroll down the full homepage here.
Game Jam Marketing
Promotional pieces for the event featured a hand with mobile phone and lightning bolts (referencing the brand symbol, Tesla, energy, and electricity), all rendered in pixel art. Posters and ads aim to catch the eye, even from afar, then to inform when and where the game jam is and get people to sign-up on the website.
Digital assets were created for online promotion, including animated squares for Instagram ads and an event banner for Eventbrite. Posters, printed in neon rainbow of colors, can stand alone, or be used to wallpaper empty fences or walls. The loud posters stand out in an urban environment and are instantly recognizable to create cohesion across the different promotional elements.
Design Process
To begin, I researched Nikola Tesla, compiled an inspiration board, and created a one-pager of facts about the subject. This was used to fuel a series of paper and digital sketches, refined concepts, and many potential logos.
The logo, company identity, and research on the history of video games shaped the look and feel of the Game Jam event branding. For the game jam event, I researched early and 8-bit video games as well as benchmarked other game jam event websites.
See it on Behance
Design by Amanda Hinton
Photography by Pete Pedrazo, Spencer Davis, Uriel Soberanes, Bruce Mars, FreePhotos, Oladimeji Ajegbile, Element5 Digital
Illustrations by derGestalterCottbus, Oleg Gamulinskiy, OpenClipart-Vectors
Mockup templates from Envato, PlaceIt, and Unsplash