Level Up with Elgato Gaming
The story
How to make video game streaming appealing to a global audience.
By creating an ironclad brand. And getting a makeover.
You know that feeling when you think you need a total makeover?
Well, that’s what Elgato Gaming asked SMAL to help them with. Elgato Gaming understood early on, how important streaming was for their content creators. Video Game Streaming has become one of the strongest-growing segments in the entirety of online streaming. Elgato Gaming rode the wave of expansion in this particular market: it paid off for them. A new ambition sprouted from their success: the company wanted to expand their product range. Which is where SMAL came in and took the project head-on.
SMAL went “the whole nine yards”. The logo from Elgato Gaming, as it was presented to SMAL, was not fully optimized for digital formats. Elgato users were using the logo, but at times, were deconstructing it to the point of making it unrecognizable. SMAL recreated the logo and made it ironclad. The play button was kept as the central element, but reused in a completely new fashion.
The play button was the main identifier with the old logo, necessary for the “original” Elgato content creators to recognize. The font was also recycled. Repurposed in a bolder and sharper manner. The stronger and more present font was better suited to the gaming brand. It gets better: SMAL saw the opportunity to establish a visual link between the font, the logo, and all the other pieces of the brand identity.
When all the pieces came together the puzzle was complete. SMAL conceived an entire style guide for the Elgato Gaming corporate identity. The visual language can be used in a way that a single element can invoke the brand identity, even if separate from the main logo. The Elgato Gaming colors were cemented into the style guide. The blue also existed previously at the company, but the style guide anchored the hues in the gaming brand’s palette. With the right color palette, came the idea and concept for the packaging.
The color palette served another purpose: the blues were molded into fragments. These fragments are a deconstructed reference to the brand identity, and are sprinkled all throughout the website and other branded materials. The user is always skillfully reminded who they’re looking at. SMAL designed a grid for Elgato Gaming with characteristic icons. They put a twist on the icons by giving them a very specific angle, the angle being a part of the core design idea. Every icon is identifiable with the brand DNA.
Then comes the brand pattern. This is a background element, but nonetheless a contributor to the Elgato Gaming brand identity. It isn’t the first thing you think of when you picture Elgato Gaming in your head, but when you see it you instantly make the connection between this pattern and the brand’s core design idea. The pattern was made to appeal to the tecchies, to those computer-savvy people who know what a circuit board looks like.
The pattern harkens to the secret life of the streaming hardware; it invokes that the product is purely performance-oriented.
The SMAL Makeover
Elgato Gaming is an example of how a holistic approach to company image is best practice.
SMAL’s Communication Design Team shaped a strong message from Elgato’s existing identity, harnessed it, and channeled it into the company’s graphics, branding, and even packaging.
