REGEN 2024: BRANDING & MARKETING

CLIENT: Team Regen

ROLES: Creative Director, Marketing Director, Lead of Graphics & Video, Concepting

PROJECT DATE: March-August 2024

PROJECT DURATION: 6 Months

ADDITIONAL CREDITS:

Director - Will Savage

Head Of Production - Cara

Social Media Manager - Sam

SOFTWARE USED:

Blender (3D)

After Effects (Motion Graphics, Animation)

Final Cut Pro X (Video Editing)

Photoshop (Graphic Design)

Regen 2024 was a live, in-person gaming event held by ‘Team Regen’ and took place from August 23rd-25th in Leicester, England.

The event garnered 720+ attendees, making it the biggest Super Smash Bros tournament in UK history.

In order to set this new record, we (Team Regen) chose to increase the production’s scale across the board compared to previous years’ events. We chose to hold the event in The Athena, in Leicester, which holds shows such as The X-Factor - it was originally built as one of England’s earliest cinemas, in 1938.

To truly elevate the event’s potential, I began working full time for Team Regen and personally designed Regen 2024’s entire branding, marketing campaign and every single creative asset for the event.

MARKETING + THEMING CONCEPT

In deciding the branding for Regen 2024, when only the venue and date had been confirmed, I suggested to the team that we theme the event around movies, with a focus on parodying film posters, considering The Athena’s history as one of the earliest UK cinemas.

This suggestion was made as a film theming would provide a large list of benefits besides simply referencing the venue’s history:

  • Famous film posters are widely recognised, and if recreated with a strong execution could start discussions that increase brand awareness (“Did you see that Smash Bros ‘Jaws’ poster?”).

  • Film posters have incredibly diverse designs, allowing for a wide range of styles to fit Super Smash Bros Ultimate’s 89 characters, which all hail from existing videogames of different genres and art styles.

  • Recreating and parodying existing designs reduces the time spent conceptualising new compositions, allowing for far more promotional pieces to be produced for the event.

  • As each promotional poster parody is posted to social media, anticipation and momentum for future posters would improve as audiences would be curious to see what design(s) would be revealed next and/or would hope that their favourite film is referenced.

  • It would be a unique styling for an event on a scale never seen before in the global history of Smash Bros tournaments. A few events had based their theming off individual films / film series before, but none had attempted to cover the overarching concept of cinema.

  • When the live event finally takes place, the most popular film poster recreations could be given away with/sold as merchandise. This saves production time by having a single design be multifunctional as both advertisement and merchandise. This also skips the need for focus groups in deciding which posters to sell as merchandise as Team Regen could look at engagement/likes/reposts on social media to find which were most popular.

The event’s theme was revealed in April 2024, through Regen 2024’s debut trailer at Team Regen’s Invasion, to huge acclaim both in-person and online.

The trailer saw an increase of over 300% in likes and shares from Regen 2023’s trailer, reaching upwards of 1,500 likes and 700 retweets on Twitter. An additional version of the trailer, which displayed references’ origins as they occurred, was posted shortly afterwards and received a further 1,000 likes and 300 retweets.

The gigantic response to the trailer would result in a confirmation of the event’s theming would result in a confirmation of the event’s theming and an expanded potential scope for the promotional campaign.

Click here to see all 72 film posters recreated for Regen 2024.

BOLDER BRANDING

Above: Select designs posted to social media to announce important players’ upcoming attendance of Regen 2024.

Sleek readability was my greatest priority in this redesign, leading to my choice to give Regen 2024 a bolder look overall.

I replaced desaturated gradients with high contrast matte colours, rounded edges became sharp corners and the main font was additionally changed from Cureto to DDT (with -6% tracking and usually a +16 slant).

Another intention of the redesign was to homogenise aspects of the Regen series’ branding with Team Regen’s branding.

Regen is both the team’s and the UK Smash Bros community’s yearly flagship event displayed globally to tens of thousands of viewers; it was my belief that stylistic alignment would improve Team Regen’s brand recognition.

Just before Regen 2024’s trailer released in April 2024, Team Regen’s graphic designer at the time chose to leave the team due to personal reasons unrelated to Team Regen Ltd.

Beforehand, he had created a design brief to fit with my proposed branding for Regen 2024, which utilised a red/purple/blue gradient, noise overlays and miscellaneous film related assets. In taking up the role as lead (and sole) graphic designer upon all my other responsibilities for Regen 2024, I decided to revisit and alter the event’s branding and design brief.

Original branding and Design Brief for Regen 2024

Revisited branding and Design Brief for Regen 2024

Above: Original Gameplay Overlay following original branding (left) vs Gameplay Overlay following revisited branding (right).

I believed that the original palette for Regen 2024 wasn’t striking enough for us in an intense, competitive environment.

The use of cream as a primary colour for information made the styling appear ‘soft’ subconsciously, especially against light grays and desaturated reds. It was for this reason that I changed the cream to white while making the reds ‘redder’ and grays darker, creating a classic and simplistic high contrast look that would present a greater importance to presented information.

MISCELLANEOUS DESIGNS FOR REGEN 2024 USING THE NEW BRANDING

IN REMOVING UNNECESSARY DETAILS AND PUTTING MORE EMPHASIS ON RAW SHAPES, CONTRAST AND INFORMATIONAL HIERARCHY, I BELIEVED REGEN 2024’S DESIGNS WOULD BE PERCEIVED AS SLEEK AND EYE CATCHING, CREATING A FURTHER SENSE OF PRESTIGE FOR THE EVENT. THIS STYLING WAS ALSO MADE TO BE CONGRUOUS WITH THE DESIGN OF SMASH ULTIMATE’S INFORMATIONAL HUD, WHICH IS SIMILARLY MINIMALISTIC YET EFFICIENT IN COLOUR AND SHAPE.

ALL IN ALL, THE REBRAND WAS VERY WELL RECEIVED AND HAS ALREADY BEEN TAKEN FORWARD FOR FUTURE TEAM REGEN EVENTS.

WHILE THE ORIGINAL PALETTE FOR THE EVENT WAS NICE, IT WASN’T STRIKING ENOUGH FOR USE IN AN INTENSE, COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT. THE USE OF CREAM AS A PRIMARY COLOUR FOR INFORMATION MADE THE STYLING APPEAR ‘SOFT’ SUBCONSCIOUSLY, ESPECIALLY AGAINST LIGHT GRAYS AND DESATURATED REDS. IT WAS FOR THIS REASON I CHANGED THE CREAM TO WHITE WHILE MAKING THE REDS REDDER AND GRAYS DARKER, CREATING A CLASSIC AND SIMPLISTIC, HIGH CONTRAST LOOK.

TO PROVIDE AN ADDITIONAL FLAIR, I ALSO INTRODUCED A DISTINCT BRIGHT GREEN TO REGEN'S BRANDING. THIS ADDITION WOULD ALLOW US BOTH TO USE IT AS AN EXTENDED MOTIF THAT SIGNIFIED SECONDARY INFORMATION TO AUDIENCES AND AS SMALL STYLISTIC PUNCTUATION THAT’D IMPROVE DESIGNS.