Riot Games at Berkeley
Developing flexible branding for Berkeley’s largest gaming club.
Timeline: Sep–Feb 2021
Role: Visual designer
Tools: Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator
Founded in 2013, this club was named “Berkeley Legends” after Riot’s flagship (and only) title at the time, League of Legends.
Our original logo, had a diamond shape and green background that represented the shape and color of League of Legends’ playable map, Summoner’s Rift, while the metallic gold gradient was similar to the game’s (now) legacy logo.
After joining as a designer in 2020, I noticed major issues with the usability of our logo:
Additionally, Riot had just released their 2nd title, VALORANT. Our name and branding didn’t reflect VALORANT or any of their games to come.
Our club was facing new challenges as we discussed the identity of the expanding club. In the face of this opportunity, I proposed a visual rebranding of Berkeley Legends. After speaking with other club officers and members of the community to gain a better idea of how Berkeley Legends is perceived, I begun the process of future-proofing the club with the following question:
How might we visually update Berkeley Legends so that it is versatile for print and digital media, represents multiple games, and still feels familiar to our gaming community?
Transparent gradients were not print-friendly, especially for screenprinting purposes.
Logos were illegible at smaller sizes.
The color palette felt outdated and was low contrast against light backgrounds.
Ideation took me through many versions of a simplified monogram logo, but none of them struck home.
I experimented with reusing green and gold, but ultimately decided against it. Since UC Berkeley and Cal Esports’ brand palette is based on gold, I wanted to distinguish Berkeley Legends with a different key color.
After discussion with our team, I made the following decisions:
Simplifying but maintaining our distinct, recognizable diamond shape.
Enlarging the text size and providing more versions of the logo to use for various use cases.
Selecting a bright teal for our primary color. Why teal? Riot Games’ most popular and recognizable titles, League of Legends and VALORANT, as well as their 3 other games, utilize some form of teal in their current branding or key art.
