IGN Ent. • 2021
IGN Summer of Gaming 2021
Role(s): Lead Designer, Art Director
While the world was very much still in the midst of the pandemic, we at IGN looked to once again run our version of E3 with the 2nd year of IGN's Summer of Gaming coverage. This year we wanted to do more coverage for a longer period of about 3 months of coverage while also revitalizing the brand and visuals
My Responsibilities:
• SoG 2021 logo
• Thumbnail design strategy/execution
• Motion graphics art direction
• Stream graphics strategy/execution
• Promotional design strategy/execution
• Social design strategy/execution
• Sales integration strategy/execution
This year the idea was to lean heavily into the more summery vibes and aesthetic. Obviously we don’t want IGN to feel like a surf company or anything so i worked with my team to develop something that felt warm and inviting but still represented the medium we are showing off.
We went with a mix of super technical looking spacey illustrations mixed with the more summery vibes. To combine those themes of space and globe trotting and being connected while staying with an aesthetic that felt appropriate for the time of year
options for the final logo
the final logo and its variations
Many options were considered for the final logo but for the most part it came down to small variations. The gradient sun graphic was the key element across each one of them which was the key element from the first year's logo as well. The idea with this year was mostly to evolve the look and feel to be more polished and have more variations for use in other mediums
staff shirt option 1
credit: angela nguyen
staff shirt option 2
credit: julia rago
For the first time during E3 we gave our staff the option to choose the staff design they preferred most. I tasked the 2 designers i worked with on the event with creating 2 distinct staff shirts. Angela leaned into the techy, space influenced design style and illustrations while Julia went with a retro sci-fi camp shirt vibe
social post style for sog 2021
youtube banner for sog 2021
Just like with year 1 of SoG, having a consistent design style that translates to every medium and media type was very important to me. I created the majority of the social promo assets and worked directly with our social designer Julia Rago to come up with a template that fit the established style
full expo from sog 2021
The IGN Expos were out way of showcasing the biggest games and features of the event. This gave me another opportunity to expand the scope of the design language and update the looks we had used in year 1 of SoG. You can watch one of the full VODs above to get an idea of what the EXPO itself felt and looked like
a 2-up green variation of our stream graphics
a 3-up orange variation of our stream graphics
A 4-up blue variant of our stream graphics
Im very proud of the first year's stream overlays we made for SoG but i felt like for year 2 they could be pushed even further. Specifically i wanted to create some visual variations since users would be seeing these overlays for hours and hours at a time. I had 3 color variants used for the main show and in addition to that made custom overlays for our SoG branded versions of the normal IGN podcasts as well like Unlocked, NGCW and Beyond
In the end i feel like it gave each day a unique look, reduced visual fatigue and made it look like we had a lot of custom work when in reality it was the smart use of templates to create so many variants
the ign homepage
Something with any event that IGN put on was that we had a secret weapon for promotion. Years prior to SoG we had developed a way to easily theme the IGN homepage in a way that would let us make our events and big editorial features feel like a complete content takeover for that day or week
SoG gave us the opportunity to really blow that out and for the first time we added a custom status/ticker bar that would drive people to more of our cover as well as provide countdowns and alerts for upcoming shows.