Gaming
Gaming
May The Best Brand Win
Sports branding expert, Todd Radom, on which eSports teams are getting it right.
May The Best Brand Win
© MLG
Sports branding is big business. Team logos need to look impressive and distinctive wherever they appear. That can be everywhere, from a massive screen in a stadium to a tiny embroidered emblem on a polo shirt. Heck, dedicated fans might even choose to have a team logo tattooed onto themselves.
eSports branding is no different. The logos need to represent teams for years to come, helping them build an instantly recognisable presence on a global stage.
Sports branding expert Todd Radom's work includes Superbowl logos, as well as branding for NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball teams. Who better to talk to about how branding works and which teams are doing it well?
Radom began his career as a graduate of New York's School of Visual Arts. He tells Red Bull he was: "always a sports fan, always a guy who was interested in the visual vernacular of professional sports here in America. Someone who doodled logos as a kid."
He started work doing book covers for Penguin which focused on sports. "I was always interested in branding specifically and logos. I accrued enough of a portfolio that I went out and pitched the professional sports leagues here in the States. Once I got my foot in the door – that was over 20 years ago – I became a go-to guy for certain teams, certain leagues and certain looks. I've been there ever since."
Over the past two decades, he's developed a deep understanding of the requirements for a sports brand. "This work is used in so many places. The visibility is so pronounced. There's a structure to sports design in the sense that a logo is a logo for a consumer brand in general, but when it comes to sports this is a lifestyle thing. People are tribal in their allegiances to their sports teams and to franchises. So to take this and create what might be one logo and then extend it to a series of visual assets that are going to be big, small, broadcast, for the web, carved into metal, painted on the field of play – he requirements and criteria are quite different to designing for any other type of project."
In the interests of gauging how eSports holds up to traditional sports branding, we show Radom a collection of logos for Dota 2, League of Legends and Call of Duty professional teams.
"There's this strong aesthetic that goes through these," he says, referring to the Dota 2 teams heading to The International in July. "There is a traditional sports aesthetic in that some of these have movement, they're bold. I see the colour palette of reds, blues and whites – I don't see pink or brown – there's nothing weird that comes out of nowhere. There are a couple in particular that look like traditional sports brands."
Alliance, Titan, Evil Geniuses and Fnatic are pointed out as being strong corporate logos, while, "Team Liquid has this horse head, a chess horse within a shield. You can put this on the front of a facade or a football team. There's a certain visual aesthetic language that runs through the vast majority of these that comes from this traditional space but maybe brings it forward a little bit."
Teams invited to The International
© Valve
Virtus.Pro's logo gets highlighted for its ice hockey leanings (a snarling bear on an orange background), and MVP Phoenix VP "could be a patch for a baseball team". LGD Gaming have the kind of logo you'd get cast in concrete and placed in the entrance hall of a company's headquarters. Call of Duty's Optic Gaming team get called out for the interlocking O and G of their brand. "It's essentially a futuristic version of a Yankees' NY".
"You want something bulletproof", says Radom. "You want one mark that’s going to translate seamlessly across all these platforms. I look at Cloud 9 – that's a really cool concept where you've got this three headed hydra of nines which has these visually dynamic qualities that would really be a great mark that would reduce and expand."
What you want to pay attention to, he says, is the elements which would make it hard to change the size of the logo and still have it be legible or recognisable. Colour gradients are another area for caution because they doesn't translate easily into embroidery stitching.
In terms of creating a logo or a design, one of the first challenges Radom mentions is getting an understanding of the locale where the team is based. But that's easier for a team with a physical game and a home stadium. We ask whether the digital environment in which eSports operates would present a challenge on that front.
"I think you would need to talk about the demographics first and foremost. There's a very specific group as I know it – a male audience of a certain age – who really hit the core of it, but at the same time I would think you would want to reach out to people who might be considered on the fringes and be as inclusive as possible without losing that core."
We mention the many dedicated subreddits for games and teams. "There is huge power out there as far as a grassroots movement that can really shape the discussion," says Radom. "Professional sports leagues may not want to engage that for a multitude of reasons but I would embrace the masses in the case of eSports and really engage that community via social media."
Teams in LCS NA
© Riot Games
Then there's the designing, the overdesigning and then pulling it back and revisions upon revisions upon revisions. The process of coming up with a finished design is collaborative effort between the artist and the club. But there's another element which the artist can't control – the team's current form.
"In the sports world you can come up with the strongest piece of design imaginable, but if it's attached to a stinker of a team associated with bad thoughts and memories it could fail on that level. On the other hand, a piece of art that gets attached to something wonderful that people love? Your work gains equity by dumb luck because of what's happened on the field of play.
"Think about mega brands. There's all this controversy attached to the Los Angeles Clippers. They've been tainted with the worst stuff imaginable because of comments that the owner has made and the franchise is now being sold. You're part of that if you designed that thing in the first place." When that kind of thing happens to affect the perception of a brand, sometimes you'd willingly sacrifice a well-designed logo as part of a fresh start for players and fans.
In terms of how you know you have a success on your hands, the conversation turns back to Radom's habit of doodling logos as a kid. The idea that if a 10-year-old kid can't doodle it on a notebook, it's too complex and sometimes it's dismissed out of hand. But that's only one element. As much as you want simplicity, you want to be able to protect your intellectual property.
"There are a billion logos out there with the head of a wolf," says Radom. "The minute you start to build shapes around it and give it some proprietary complexity to make it into something that's multilayered – that's needed for the 21st century and beyond."
What you're looking for is something which walks that line between simplicity and distinctiveness. But, having discussed how traditional sports-style branding works and how pro gaming team logos hold up in comparison, is that where Radom thinks eSports should actually be heading?
"It's an interesting question," he replies. "Because you don't have a century of tradition behind this, you can break away and start from scratch with this stuff."
The gaming teams are looking to represent qualities such as competitiveness, excitement and motion so you can see why borrowing from traditional sports branding makes sense. But Radom notes that "you can distil [those qualities] down to a modern look that doesn't necessarily follow the visual traditions that have existed for over 100 years."
Essentially, traditional sports brands are a great reference point, but there's huge scope for eSports to incorporate rather than imitate. Ultimately we could see the industry establish its own distinct visual language.
