Summer Splash
Designing a Multi-platform Brand Identity for a Virtual Gaming Expereince
Role:
Design Lead
Project Type:
Branding, Social + Twitch Broadcast
Tools:
Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Google Sheets
Summer Splash is a virtual intercollegiate gaming convention and competition co-hosted by various gaming and esports clubs across the United States. Consisting of 8 competitive, prize-based tournaments, casual games, and industry panels, Summer Splash has over 2,000 Discord community members and has achieved over 11,000 stream views across 6 partner channels.
In my two years as Design Lead, I directed branding ideation and style guide development, oversaw two distinct teams designing for different platforms, and collaborated with Marketing, Partnership, and Tournament Organizer teams to track and critique over 100 deliverables. I also created assets for both social and broadcast teams, as well as outreach decks for sponsorship and panelist collaboration.
Challenges → Solutions
Completing Deliverables for Diverse Teams
Streamlined the critique/approval process and liaised between designers and other team leads
Developed a flexible timeline for deliverables, accounting for potential delays, while establishing hard deadlines.
Balancing Brand Cohesion with Creative Freedom
Created guidelines with distinguishable fonts, colors, and elements to ensure cohesion, while allowing for flexibility in interpretation
Actively reviewed work to ensure guidelines were being followed
2026 Work
Process
We began by exploring images on Pinterest to guide the direction. The inital idea was inspired by frutiger aero/tropical aesthetics to match the summer vacation branding established in prior years. As we continued to explore fonts and visuals, our direction shifted towards more ocean themed and retro video game posters.
Images of retro game posters, manuals
Font exploration
We made design tests of two different directions we considered. The game-manual style gave us the strongest balance between personality and information and best suited the skillset of the design team. Our final brand guideline combined the oceanic colors of our moodboard with the layout of game manuals.
Game Cartridge/Illustration Style: Playful, Whimsical
Game Manual Style: Polished, Nostalgic
Final Brand Guidelines: Pesentation/Logo Made by Leila Clinton, Mascot designed by Madison Kim
Completed Work
Select 2025 Work
