GGEZ: An Exploration of Esports Branding by Maine College of Art

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BRANDING GGEZ — 1

GGEZ: An Exploration of Esports Branding by Kieran Friel Thesis Book Created in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design Portland, Maine May 2021

This book is dedicated to my family and friends here at MECA and back home. Mom and Dad, Thank you for always loving supporting me no matter how crazy I sound explaining my ideas, dreams, and theories to you. I wouldn’t be half the woman I am today without you two. Kate and Maggie, Thank you two for putting up with my weird questions and impromptu critiques. You two are the best sisters I could have ever asked for. My MECA Friends, Thank you for being the most supportive group of hard working people I will ever meet. You are all brilliant and beautiful, inside and out. Your talents and creativity are going to take you to such incredible places. Thank you for being my family away from home for the past four years. We did it.

Table of Contents

WTF Is Esports?

Process & Progress

Brand Guidelines

Application Gallery

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WTF Is Esports? GGEZ — 6

In recent history, esports is a word that has been thrown around online, on TV, and in the news, but many people don’t know what it really is. The simplest way to put it is esports is the professional sports league for video games. Similarly to how baseball has the major and the minor league, esports has a different league for each game. DOTA 2, League of Legends, Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Valorant are some of the most popular leagues right now. For my thesis, I knew I wanted to design something related to video games as they have been a large part of my life since I was little. I remember playing games with my dad on the Original Xbox when I was five years old. Over the seventeen years I have been playing, I haven’t improved much, but my love for playing and watching video games has grown exponentially. My love reached a new level when Blizzard announced there would be a esports League for Overwatch in 2017, my freshman year of college.

Overwatch League Inaugural Season Banner — overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/21108384/the-inaugural-season-explained

Overwatch is a team-based first person shooter by Blizzard Entertainment, released in 2017. Players are divided into teams of six that use a forced 2–2–2 team composition. 2–2–2 means that there can only be two players using characters from one class. Similar to other games, the three classes are support, tank, and damage.

Each game’s goal is slightly different depending on the type of map being played on. There are four different map types that would be used in a standard Overwatch League Game: Assault, Escort, Hybrid, and Control. Assault maps have the attacking team trying to capture two different points in a specific order. Control maps put both teams on the attack and have them fight over an area of the map. The first to reach 100% wins. Escort missions have the attacking team pushing an object, frequently a car-type vehicle, called the payload to an end goal.

Tank players have the most base health, so they act as the shields and battering rams for the team. Without a good tank, teams have no hope of making any progress. Damage players main goal is to kill the other team. The better plays they make, the more enemies they kill. The fewer enemies alive, the more progress teams can make.

WTF Is Esports?

Support players are the ones who heal or boost their teammates, allowing them to stay alive longer in the heat of battle. Without support players, everyone would be dying faster than they can respawn.

Hybrid maps are a combination of Escort and Control. The attacking team must first capture the payload before moving it. Overwatch Game Cover tinyurl.com/overwatch-game-cover

The defending team’s goal is always to stop the attacking team before they reach the goal.

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WTF Is Esports?

Once the time is up or the attackers reach their goal, the teams switch places. Unless a team makes more progress in the first round, this switch can happen twice until a winner is declared.

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Standard OWL games are played best of five, so the first team to win on three maps wins. Most wins are either 3 to 2 or 3 to 1, but its not unheard of for a team to go 3 to 0 or come back and reverse sweep. A reverse sweep is when a team loses the first and maybe second map, but comes back and wins three in a row.

Hanamura Assault Map from Overwatch — playoverwatch.com/en-us/maps/

A question you may have been asking yourself at this point is “What does GGEZ mean?” Much like any other sports league, OWL has it’s own lingo. GGEZ stands for “Good Game, Eazy.” This may seem like an odd choice for a thesis project, but it has become more of a joke in the Overwatch world rather than a phrase used to brag or annoy others.

“It’s past my bedtime, Please don’t tell my mommy”

WTF Is Esports?

To prevent players from becoming toxic and mean, Blizzard replaces the phrase “GGEZ” with a number of funny phrases like:

“I feel very small... please hold me...” With a title in mind, I dove head first into researching esports branding as well as possible cities and countries for my team 2021 Overwatch League Graphic – overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/new-2021-season-info-schedule-tournaments-prizing-and-more

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My research consisted of two phases that happened simultaneously, visual and geographical. The visual research consisted of compiling good examples of esports design, especially examples from Overwatch League. Some of the teams I saw myself looking at most were the Texas-based Houston Outlaws and the Chinese Team, the Hangzhou Spark.

Process & Progress

Houston Outlaws 2020 Graphic – overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/23277655

Hangzhou Spark Wallpaper https://tinyurl.com/hangzhou-spark

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Process & Progress

The goal with the geographical research was to pick the country the team would be based in. The country needed to have a rich history that could provide inspiration for the team’s color pallet and logo.

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I started this research by seeing which countries have teams that have done well in the Overwatch World Cup, a fan favorite off season event that divides players by their home country rather than the team they are signed to. I then cross-checked this list with the in-game characters to see if any came from any of the countries on the list. I did this so the country could feel represented in real life as well as in the game. From here, I narrowed my search down to New Zealand, Brazil, and Japan. After continuing my research even more, I found that Japan was the country that was inspiring me the most.

Overwatch World Cup Graphic – playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/21158632/what-to-watch-for-at-the-overwatch-world-cup/

With Japan in mind, I started creating mood boards to find the city the team would be based in. After narrowing it down to three different cities, I found myself going back to Kyoto, Japan. The beautiful sakura blossoms stuck with me, so I decided to take that idea and run with it.

Above, Okinawa Moodboard. Below, Tokyo Moodboard

Process & Progress

Kyoto

Kyoto Mood Board

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Process & Progress

Once I had my country selected, I started working on the logo and color pallets. Since I wanted to add a touch of femininity to esports, since it is a male-dominated space, the Kyoto Blossoms felt like the perfect name to welcome female fans in a male-dominated space

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Possible Kyoto Color Pallets

Early Logo Sketches

After some adjustments and refinements, I created my final logo and color pallet. From here, my goal was to design mockups and graphics to be displayed on a computer, make one home and one away jerseys, as well as two posters that would be displayed for the thesis exhibition.

Kyoto Blossoms Orange Poster

Process & Progress

The Japanese characters on the pink poster is a phrase, “Ganbare” in english, that is commonly used at sporting events to encourage the athletes to do their best. Since each Overwatch League team has a phrase that has been turned into a promotional hashtag to be used on Twitter, I thought that Ganbare would be the perfect choice for the team. Kyoto Blossoms Pink Poster

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Process & Progress GGEZ — 16

I also explored animating using code. I have been taking a coding class alongside my thesis work, so I jumped at the opportunity to create interesting animations while also expanding my coding knowlege. While I was working on the coding animations, I also made vinyl stencils and used them to hand paint jerseys that would be displayed along side the posters for my thesis exhibition. Home Jersey P5.JS Web Editor

Away Jersey

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The Kyoto Blossoms is the Overwatch League’s only Japanese-based team. Inspired by the sakura blossoms found in Kyoto, the team is making a name for themselves and their flower power. The team’s aesthetics combines the typical geometric typefaces esports are known for with the slightly feminine imagery surrounding flowers, as seen in the logo.

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The logo is comprised of three separate parts: the flower, “Kyoto” and “Blossoms.” There are multiple variations of the logo that can be used, but in most cases the full logo should be used. Any logos should not be stretched, altered, or edited in any way. However, Photoshop can be used to add effects or texture to the logo as long as the logo stays the same. Proper spacing should also be used to maintain consistency across the team’s brand. When possible, the print or screen variation of the two color logo should be used, but the full logo can be used in the appropriate Sakura pink. When the typographic logos are being used, one of the two colors should be used.

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Logos GGEZ — 19

Screen

Colors

Sakura Pink RGB: 235, 18, 120 CMYK: 2, 95, 8, 0 HEX: #EB1278

RGB: 237, 17, 116 CMYK: 0,93,51,7 Hex: #ED1174

Sunrise Orange

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RGB: 251, 156, 132 CMYK: 0, 39, 35, 0 HEX: #FB9C84

RGB: 244, 122, 99 CMYK: 2, 52, 47, 0 HEX: #F47B63

All Round Gothic ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz Flowers bloom when faced with adversity. You can see them while walking down the street in a busy city, growing in cracks in the concrete sidewalks as cars zoom by. Typefaces

Avenir Next ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz Flowers bloom when faced with adversity. You can see them while walking down the street in a busy city, growing in cracks in the concrete sidewalks as cars zoom by. It’s quite shocking to see them growing when no one is taking care of them, watering them, and helping them flourish, but it does show that flowers are resilient beings who represent both beauty and perseverance.

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Support

The Kyoto Blossom icon system contains three logos: One to represent each hero class, Support, Tank, and DPS, top to bottom on the left. These icons can be used in two different ways. They can stand alone in social media assets or graphics or be used in a pattern.

Icons

When using the icon system, none of them should be altered or warped in any way. Effects can be added using Photoshop, but no alterations should occur. If a pattern is being made, it should utilize one or all of the logos, never two. The original flower logo can be added to any pattern being made with the icon set. The next four pages showcase four different pattern variations.

Tank

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DPS

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Application Gallery

Above: Blizzard Arena Mockup. Below: Team Skin Mockup.

Kyoto Blossoms Shirt Mockup

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Overwatch League Stream Final Score Graphic Mockup

Above: Overwatch League Twitter Mockup To the Left: Overwatch League Website Mockup

Kyoto Blossoms Instagram Mockup

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Sources overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/21108384/the-inaugural-season-explained tinyurl.com/overwatch-game-cover playoverwatch.com/en-us/maps/ overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/new-2021-season-info-schedule-tournaments-prizing-and-more overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/23277655 tinyurl.com/hangzhou-spark playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/21158632/what-to-watch-for-at-the-overwatch-world-cup/ overwatchleague.com/en-us/ mockups-design.com/ mrmockup.com/

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