Southern New Hampshire University
GRA 260: Designing a Brand Identity
Students of this course demonstrate understanding of marketing, branding, and design concepts through the creation of a logo and in-depth branding guide for a fictional company of choice. This project focused on the creation of a logo and branding guide for a fictional video game company “RacerX.” RacerX is a new video game development company from San Francisco with a target audience of Millennial gamers, and the company requires a logo and clear branding elements to establish recognition with this target demographic.
Logo Development
The client required a logo with a unique wordmark and brandmark. Early concept sketches of the brandmark explored motor sport/racing themes with traditional gaming imagery balancing the company namesake with its industry. These explorations resulted in three mock-ups submitted to the client.
Option 1
The first logo concept combines racing and gaming imagery with a reference to early gaming technology with the forward throttle of a joystick. The wordmark is created with the “Xenara” font that is a simple sans serif per the target’s preference, and the narrow, simple characters with rounded edges balance the brandmark’s rounded angles.
Option 2
The second concept combines racing and gaming imagery with a reference to a fable character offering a playful mascot opportunity for the company. Negative space in the helmet shape creates the visor in a shape that references a gaming controller, and the “X” creates the “eye” of the rabbit while also appearing as a button on the gaming controller shape. The font “CCSmash” is used to create the wordmark for RacerX.
Option 3
The third concept references the black and white checkered flag waved at the finish line of motor racing to create the brandmark “X” of RacerX. While leaning forward into the future, the simple block-style graphic harkens to the old days of 8-bit pixel video game art appealing to the target audience’s nostalgia. The font “AsimovSans” utilized in the wordmark is a heavy, block-style of the font that balances with block-style of the brandmark.
The client selected the second logo concept for further development. The image was modified into a simpler, sleeker design that maintained the playful rabbit motif while balancing a light sans serif wordmark. The final design is featured with variations in the branding guide document at the bottom of the webpage.
Branding Guide
The final branding guide for RacerX outlines the client’s branding elements supported by customer and industry research. The final design of the logo is presented with color variants. Instructions for proper use and placement of the elements with visual demonstrations of acceptable and unacceptable use are included to ensure consistent brand imaging and messaging across all channels.