Ubisoft Global Branding
Company Method
Introduction Date June 13, 2017
Project Website
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Method partnered with Ubisoft to redesign their master brand identity helping fulfil the strategic ambition to move from video game publisher to global entertainment brand creator. Ubisoft is the creator, publisher, and distributor of interactive entertainment super brands, including Assassin’s Creed, Rayman, Just Dance, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, and Tom Clancy’s video game series. Method worked closely with the Ubisoft brand team to simplify the master brand identity into a more iconic form that could take on the personality and skin of any of their games. We produced a set of brand assets and style guide that allowed them to build on the equity of their original ‘swirl’ mark and showcase their rich portfolio. Method helped Ubisoft create website designs for all of their key customer journey points ensuring the Ubisoft experience was consistent and seamless, and truly fulfilling their promise of ‘partner in play’ producing design directions not only for their main dot com, but also for Ubisoft Club, Ubisoft Store, Ubisoft Support, as well as Ubisoft’s internal communications. June 2017 Ubisoft officially launched its new brand identity at E3 in Los Angeles, the world's biggest gaming conference. The identity was unveiled to the 68,000 people in attendance, starting with Ubisoft’s press conference; a highly sought after event at the Orpheum Theatre, as well as a Youtube live stream of the event which generated over one million views within the 3 days. The new identity was beautifully applied to every touch point, from the biggest logo in the show, to the exquisite silver pin badges worn by the Ubisoft leadership team, including Yves Guillemot their CEO. The ‘swirl’ is often used in the gaming environments.This idea is a way to strengthen the recognition of the master brand with no ‘real world’ marketing or advertising costs. The logo is deliberately simple allowing it to take the ‘skin’ from individual gaming products. Part of the identity development was to create a bespoke Ubisoft typeface. This as well as being a unique asset helped with over all licensing costs for Ubisoft. We worked with Colophon type foundry to create ‘Ubisoft Sans’ in 2 weights.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Although the identity evolution could be considered a relatively simple process in terms of design complexity, the real challenge was gaining alignment across a global, distributed organization, as well as with Ubisoft’s fan base. We tested the designs with users early on and refined them based on the feedback we received. Putting the consumer at the heart of the process helped us generate internal buy-in, so that upon launch, the entire organization and wider gaming community felt a genuine sense of ownership. “It has been a shared pleasure to work with you and all the talents at Method London. The new identity has been so quickly adopted and loved by our teams and fans, congratulations!” Stephanie Magnier, VP, Global Communications, Ubisoft
Who worked on the project?
Selim Cherif — Lead Designer Natasha Kojokari — Lead Designer Hector Pottie — Creative Director Kate Butchart — Client Services Director Matt Millington — Business Development Director
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University of California, Los Angeles, Wasserman Football Center
Company ZGF Architects
Introduction Date July 14, 2017
Project Website
Why is this project worthy of an award?
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) set out to create a state-of-the-art complex for their football program, representative of their football heritage and with the intention of further raising the caliber of their athletic program, promoting player development, and driving player and coach recruitment. Designed to achieve LEED Platinum®, the 73,500 SF facility co-locates staff and players for the first time. The goal of the design was to create a highly efficient venue for building a powerful football team and facilitating off-field bonding and comradery among players, while taking advantage of the mild local climate. Following a series of immersive work sessions with the client, the design team conceptualized a cohesive branded environment for this new facility. An engaging and consistent visual vernacular was developed to pass down the lore and legends of the program, and a new iteration of the cute and cuddly Bruin Bear mascot was created with the intention of inspiring current players, coaches, and staff, as well as attracting potential new recruits. Once all the program’s artifacts, archive photography, stats, and other information and physical items were collected, the design team faced the additional challenge of deducing which among them were truly meaningful to the team and how best to display or represent them. Using a broad range of executions and materials, the design team has visually conveyed the program’s past players and accomplishments, and painted a picture of the team’s future that new recruits can envision themselves a part of—expressing a remembrance of tradition amidst forward momentum. The materiality of the interiors, coupled with evocative environmental graphics placed throughout the complex, creates a visual language that engages users and communicates both the University’s brand and the football program tenets of strength, power, ferocity, and team legacy. Industrial elements are paired with high quality furnishings and finishes. Materials from light ash wood and brushed metals to polished concrete and warm leathers were utilized in a variety of forms, in an expression of efficiency and elegance. The color palette acknowledges school branding in the context of the football program, with deeper tones of team colors alongside stealthy black in floor coverings, furnishings, and millwork. The University’s “gold” is always represented in its true metallic form through graphic brass inlays. The University’s football program now has a place to call home that truly feels like their home. This new facility and the extensive, varied, and creative integration of environmental graphics has reinvigorated the culture and spirit of the program, contributing a sense of place and identity that UCLA football has never had before. Players past, present, and future are inspired, as are donors, for whom the array of donor recognition “moments” continue to be an attractive and gratifying representation of their contributions to the program.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Detailed mosaics, laser-cut cameos of the new rendition of the team mascot, and leather and brass inlays are among the many elements found within 11 largescale Branding / Storytelling moments; five executions combining Donor Recognition and Storytelling; six additional types of Donor Recognition “moments” acknowledging over 150 donors; and a further 191 signage elements for Wayfinding, Room Signage, and ADA code signage. In the lobby, a floor-to-ceiling UCLA logo integrated into the black and gold ribbed wood of the interior architecture contributes a sense of place and identity. Multimedia vitrines are inset into the logo wall, displaying National Championship and Heisman Trophy wins, as well as a “Bruins breaking barriers” tribute. A broad pathway integrated into the slate flooring, called the “Letterman Walk,” creates a route from the entrance to the elevator for visiting recruits, using a combination of engraving and brass inlays to highlight players who have lettered in the sport. A series of metal panels that spans the length of the ground floor, known as the “Beach to Bowl Wall,” features a custom, perforated design mapping UCLA’s presence across the city—from Santa Monica beach to their stadium, the Rose Bowl. The stadium graphic consists of perforated metal and screen-printing, with donor names incorporated using vinyl lettering, allowing flexibility to update names as required. This wall performs double-duty, contributing to the visual aesthetic of the facility, while masking ventilation equipment and ductwork, and enabling air to flow through the graphic perforations. A similar graphic is perforated into the white Corian doors of player lockers, adding visual interest, graphic continuity between spaces, and further ventilation for increased airflow and odor control. The ground level Strength & Conditioning Center has been named for one of the most recognizable Bruins, and donor to the facility, Troy Aikman. In addition to bearing his name, the room features a larger than life image of Aikman printed on the wood paneling, along with a timeline of his achievements, to motivate and inspire players as they train. The fierce new rendition of the team mascot can be seen throughout the facility as cameos for room name plates and in the wall of carved wood silhouettes denoting players drafted into the NFL. The NFL draft wall is a flexible system that can be rearranged as new years and players are added. One of the most impactful displays is the textural roaring bear mosaic, stretching 37 FT high between the second-floor domain of the players and the third-floor realm of coaches and recruits. Created with 11,520 three-and-a-half inch blocks stained a dozen shades of grey, it features the names of the team’s “All American” honorees. Custom tile mosaics have also been created, adding unique visual interest to wet areas. This treatment solved graphic issues the design team faced when dealing with iconic photographs that became highly pixilated when enlarged. In this way, historic moments were given a vibrant new lease on life.
Who worked on the project?
Jenny Lee - environmental graphic designer Suejin Park - environmental graphic designer Brian Maguire - fabrication and prototyping Randall Stegmeier - senior interior designer Antony Tavlian - interior designer Ted Hyman - partner-in-charge Braulio Baptista - design partner Sean McGreal - senior designer David Alf - project designer Amir Hamed - project designer Lily Chiu - senior project architect Matthew Tribe - technical designer Shara Castillo - technical designer Marisa Keckeisen - project designer Phiroze Titina - project manager
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University of North Carolina Men's Basketball
Company Advent
Introduction Date October 1, 2016
Project Website http://adventresults.com/projects/north-carolina-basketball/
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Custom retail environments and brand sponsorships have changed the way young players look at schools — they see college teams as brands. Player spaces for today’s national championship athletics departments have to achieve multiple goals for multiple audiences. In addition to providing practical, inspiring spaces for student-athletes, they’re relied upon to persuade parents, transform alumni into donors and to recruit tomorrow’s superstars. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is, in many ways, the genesis of modern day college basketball culture. Their most famous alumnus, Michael Jordan, not only reinvented the way players and fans saw the game, he reinvented the basketball player as a cultural (and business) icon. The first step in activating this space, beyond injecting it with an electric burst of Tar Heel Blue, was to create a Jordan shoe display. With the cooperation of the Jordan brand, UNC procured one of every Jordan shoe model ever produced — in Carolina blue. We created a gleaming shoe wall that has become a social media hot spot for guests, players and recruits. When telling the story of a program with a long and lauded history in narrow hallways, the first danger is creating a cluttered, claustrophobic experience. We relied on major moments at the ends of passages to communicate chunks of data, and let the hallway walls carry hero images of great players and minimal text. Throughout the space, we made the most of UNC’s beloved argyle pattern, abstracting it and using it to create a sense of scale and order. Tone-on-tone “numerology” walls bear the brunt of data communication, with one wall bearing team statistics and another individual player achievements. These walls visually anchor the space and give traffic a destination to gravitate toward. As these stats relate to an ongoing program, the numbers are attached with rare earth magnets, making the displays easily updateable. In fact, UNC updated their national championship number not long after this piece was installed. So many notable players have passed through UNC that we chose to highlight the most accomplished in the main hallway near the locker room and then divided the others by decade and displayed them in impact graphics in the players lounge. Great players from the past provide inspiration, but current players mustn’t feel overlooked in their own space. After all, they spend as much, if not more, time here as they do in their own dorm rooms. We represented the current team in a sprawling, dramatic custom graphic that the program liked so much they adopted it as their Twitter hero image. Ever-present Tar Heel blue, storied team mantras like “Play Hard, Play Smart, Play Together” (coined by UNC’s Dean Smith), and massive lit logos provide polish, pop and cohesive brand identity, while NCAA tournament stats and former greats keep today’s players pushing forward and tomorrow’s players hoping to don the argyle.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
Watching the growth of the Jordan shoe wall as a media presence for UNC has been incredibly rewarding. UNC has shot sizzle videos in front of it, CBS Sports and other media outlets have featured it, and players and fans alike pose in front of it and post to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The space has become a valuable recruiting tool for the program, and a point of pride for players and coach alike, and we consider this to be the highest measurement of design success.
Who worked on the project?
Design Director: Seth Maddox Design Lead: Jared Coomes
View the project video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2YljiF3al4
University of Southern California Marshall School of Business (Fertitta Hall)
Company Advent
Introduction Date November 1, 2016
Project Website http://adventresults.com/projects/fertitta-hall-usc-marshall-school-of-business/
Why is this project worthy of an award?
Feritta Hall was the first of several spaces we designed (and are currently designing) for the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, and it set the tone for design vocabulary across multiple facilities, providing an overarching brand feel that could flex and breathe with the personalities and priorities of different programs. USC’s campus is high-energy and bustling, with skateboards, bikes and pedestrians often moving faster than the nearby Los Angeles traffic. The entry lobby to Fertitta Hall provides a quiet eddy in the many currents, and allows students a moment to pause before venturing further into the classrooms and labs of the five-story, 102,000-square-foot facility. The room feels like an art deco lounge, with a wide fireplace, luxury materials and comfortable seating. Ambitious in its approach to communicating large amounts of information in a high-traffic space with both digital and static elements, our design for Fertitta Hall successfully pushed boundaries of what is expected within a school of business. A massive digital wall, controlled by a nearby touchscreen coffee table, faces the room and offers up-to-the minute business news and a stock ticker, as well as USC Marshall news and statistics, university news and more. Near this is the Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, a stepped series of digital panels with multi-layered information on USC Marshall business greats. Focus on successful alumni is a theme throughout the building, with elevator pitches, quotes and stories on business game changers who got their start at USC. From global studies to the Experiential Learning Center, we brought a unifying design language to the space while honoring the distinct culture of the Trojan family.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
We conducted a series of in-depth discovery interviews with faculty, students and alumni, and these interviews influenced the design approach and also content of displays. A popular quote in dimensional text that reads, “Be confident and bold. Don’t be your own filter. People want to hear what you have to say,” by Melissa Lora, a USC alumna and Taco Bell executive, was a spontaneous comment taken directly from our interviews.
Who worked on the project?
Design Director: Drew Bryant Design Lead: Nathan Morgan Designer: Lauren Duke Designer: Jared Coomes Designer: John Henley Digital Experience: John Downie
View the project video: https://vimeo.com/191070099
UPROAR
Company The Mill
Introduction Date December 16, 2017
Project Website http://www.themill.com/portfolio/4175/uproar-?q=uproar
Why is this project worthy of an award?
If awarded, we propose donating the prize money to local charities and organizations doing important work on the ground in Houston post-Harvey. More than 22,000 children have been left homeless since the hurricane, and many of the schools are damaged by floods. We’d love to consider an organization like Coder Kids, whose mission is to provide kids with the opportunity to learn creative coding in local schools; and Children at Risk, to support their efforts in improving the quality of schools in Houston with a special focus on education, health, and nutrition.
What else would you like to share about your design? Why is it unique and innovative?
UPROAR is a tribute to the resilience of the people of Houston in the face of Hurricane Harvey. The fluid, painterly projection depicts large swaths of color that ebb, flow, and mingle over time. Within this abstract gestalt exists a data visualization – one that pins wind and rain data against the rise of #HOUSTONSTRONG on Twitter over the course of four days. The undulating colors and ripples are driven by the story of two opposing forces. Pairing these previously unrelated data sets (meteorological vs. user generated) allows for the humanization of the data; bridging the gap between the objective (wind and rain) and the emotionally measurable (the hashtag). Consensus around the effectiveness of hashtags in crises is contentious. History, race, and socio-economics are but a few factors shaping these complex narratives. Nevertheless, certain hashtags have undeniably furthered awareness, mobilized funds, and garnered worldwide solidarity: be it protests against police brutality in Ferguson, political oppression in Egypt, or the earthquake in Haiti.
Who worked on the project?
Kinda Akash- Director, William Arnold - Director, Jimmy Gass - Creative Technologist, Eric Alba - Producer, Victor Bekker - Coordinator, Min-Wei Lee - DP
View the project video: http://www.themill.com/portfolio/4175/uproar-?q=uproar
