Pentagram has created an inspiring and imaginative identity for Nuverse, which is designed to appeal to the games developer and publisher’s global community. The identity needed to reflect the excitement and escapism that games can bring, offering windows into virtual worlds and creating lasting memories at every stage of our lives.
It was important for the new identity to stand out among existing games labels, and for gamers to instantly understand what Nuverse stands for—to create a sense of joy and companionship for individuals coming together through gaming.
The new identity celebrates the users at the very centre of the Nuverse experience, with colourful player figures that enable the brand to share its stories. These can range from a single player on a heroic quest to several players forming part of a winning team or hundreds and thousands coming together to create a distant, thriving MMO world.
Nuverse represents a virtual, fantasy world where players can connect through their shared love of gaming. After extensive research, the design team created a platform for the Nuverse community that extends the real-life experience and forms the bedrock of the new identity.
The Nuverse symbol (which appears in both 2-D and 3-D versions) was created from a chain of connected sphere-like forms, representing two players engaged in a game. These players come together to reveal the letters ‘n’ and ‘v’ and sit alongside the bold, italic Nuverse wordmark, which appears in English and Chinese. The dynamic symbol and wordmark include a subtle playfulness that invokes the nostalgia of classic gaming.
The clean, primary colour palette consists of an electric blue and a bright leafy green combined with black and white. The primary Latin typeface is Florian Karsten’s FK Grotesk, which is paired with the Bold and Black versions of Rui Abreu’s Azo Sans as the secondary typeface. These are used alongside an extended width sans-serif Chinese type family by Founder Type, the combination adding to the sense of joy throughout.
To represent the games community and the many individuals who share the experience, the team created 50 three-dimensional player icons. Based on a set of parameters, these are formed from different-sized cubes and spheres, which connect to form irregular 3-D shapes. These are colour-coded according to the type of game being played (Sports, SciFi/FPS, Adventure or Family/Social). Each genre has its own colour palette, giving rise to over 500 combinations of player icons.
The design team created a series of animations of the swirling ‘Player Story’ representing all of the players who are connecting at any one time. These are mapped out like a murmuration of starlings, emphasising the shared experience of gaming and reinforcing the idea of many individuals coming together to create something quite poetic. The animations are designed to be used for promotional ads and at events, and the animation snapshots are used throughout the brand visuals in various crops, giving a sense of depth and movement.
The new identity needed to be flexible enough to work across multiple platforms, applications and sizes. These range from the numerous onscreen applications (from the smallest app icon to massive HD screens) through to various real-world applications ranging from printed business cards, the exterior and interior signage at Nuverse’s HQ and a range of collectable Nuverse merchandise.
Pentagram’s sound design team created a unique sound identity for Nuverse. Inspired by the visual identity, the team looked at how this fantasy world could be explored sonically, focusing on the twin elements of excitement and joy.
The sonic identity needed to sound bold, exciting and clear, no matter what the playback device. The team created a modular construction, allowing them to extend, contract or simplify the sound design for a given event or touchpoint.
The team used a granular synthesis technique, essentially turning sound into tiny grains that can then be reordered, reworked and brought together. This matches the bold visual aesthetic through ascending sonic DNA, percussive textures, warm synthesiser tones and pleasing vocals.
Referencing the heritage of sonic branding in video games, two voices speak the word “Nuverse”. The purpose is twofold; it reinforces the brand name and embraces Nuverse’s global audience by utilising many different tones and intonations.
Pentagram has created an identity for Nuverse which perfectly places the brand at the very heart of the gaming industry and expresses its mission to develop games that inspire joy, foster a sense of belonging and create lasting memories for whoever plays them.
