E-sport: from logo to the big stage
Back in 2007 I was at Prague Design high school. Studing was at second place. Playing games was my life. Because we moved a lot with my family, making friends online was much easier and playing games was ideal tool for that. After some time I turned to competitive gaming and I became part of the e-sport organisation eXtatus.
We had a great time for 2 years. We became top3 in our country and from an unknown organization we became the standard of gaming scene. Now I realize how important was to be an insider in game and part of the team to be able to make new brand identity of eXtatus.
eXtatus expended since then and in 2014 the owner called me and said “let’s do a new logo”. What we achieved was to make a strong symbol without effects or other embellish. Our benchmark was logos of Fnatic and SK-gaming they were our Gods in game and brand identity.
Process
Meaning of the word “extatus” is nothing :) shortcut “eXt” was very hard to set by typography. So we picked single “E”
It was one of my first logos. In fact I felt like wtf I am doing here.
All is tied to the organisation. Red and black color, rounded font. Symbol of fire meteor falling on enemy, smashing them.
Logotype lived by its life with players on jerseys, tournamets flags, social sites and progaming sites. Many designers worked with the logotype without me ever making brand manual. Every designer put something into it from themselves and became part of making of the brand. The greatest thing on it is that nobody made mistake, everything was working perfectly even without manual. Owner was part of the process from start to finish and he hold strong hand on brand.
In 2017 eXtatus had best squad in CS:GO in Czech and Slovak history. With that came a strong sponsor and big marketing.
Team became top 30 in world ranking. And at that time people came and started to use logotype in their way :).
In shopping malls I saw people with our “E” on hoodie. Almost everyone fell in love with eXtatus brand. And I am really proud of everyone involved in that.
What I learned
- Most valuable is to be an insider, part of the team/family. But have healthy distance.
- It helps me to define my role in team — playing games was good for it
- practise, practise, practise (Counter strike, illustrator)
At the end
Ehm, I didn’t make it to big worldwide stages but our “E” does and that’s a big victory for me.
