Early on into the project, I was having a lot of trouble thinking up a solid identity for SmashBase. Immediately I was going for purple as the main color - other modern gaming apps have been doing it. It’s fun and it’s gamer, but not overwhelmingly so. Accessible! Purple is even associated with support and help (ideal for tools!) according to Atlassian’s color guidelines. But how can we ever build up a distinct visual identity if we just…look like Twitch and Discord? We would essentially have a ‘hollow’ brand if we don't distinguish it further. It doesn’t feel scalable or memorable, so I decided to think harder on it.
Colors aren’t the only way to differentiate a brand. Shapes, style, animations, fonts…the list goes on. But we need to start somewhere to build everything else upon.
What does SmashBase represent?
Fun and functional tools for the community, to make it a better community.
A commitment to data, and truly fair competition
Logo, strapline, symbols, icons, mascot(?), color palette, font, patterns, swashes/curves/other shapes, CTA…these are some differentiators that I was considering.
However, in the race from zero to one, I can't get caught up in building out every minor detail - I would bottleneck our workflow and we wouldn't get things done. I opted to focus only on the most time-efficient ones.
Logo:
I decided to go with a 3d cube - a 'base' if you will. I gave it the traditional Smash swoosh on one side, as well as Gamecube controller ports on the side to make it recognizable for our audience. The flag on top solidifies it as a base/fort rather than a cube. The shape allows us to mess with the colors a fair amount without losing a lot of recognizability too!
The logotype I chose was Chalet London - the font strikes a perfect balance between modern, rounded, and sleek. I was especially a big fan of the uniform x-height and the lack of distracting vowel accents.
Colors:
I chose purple for the reasons above, but decided to use an accent color of gold to differentiate it further from other tools/web apps. I chose gold specifically for two reasons: firstly, it contrasts really well in a way that looks nice. Secondly, it's a color that is both fun and 'premium'. Perfect for our suite of highly performative and engaging tools. With these logo colors, I was able to execute a unique and elegant dark-mode design using shades of dark blue.
Fonts:
My goal with the font choices were to make our website both fun and functional. I chose Outfit because I found that the rounded curves and tall figures strike a great balance of playful and clean. Outfit would serve to be our primary font for headings and the like.
Spline Sans was the font of choice for interfaces where readability and functionality needed to take more of an emphasis. It pairs well with Outfit due to having a similar letter width but the letters themselves are sleeker and more well-defined.
With all of this in mind, I think Smashbase is definitely going to stand out as a brand in the space. There's definitely gonna be some iteration as nothing is perfect the first time around, but I'm excited to see how it evolves and develops.