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:
Colors:
Fonts: