Best of 2020

Art Direction
Graphic Design
Illustration

november-december 2020

Overview

The Best of 20XX Awards have been a long tradition at IGN and serves as a guide for gamers to see the best of what the year had to offer. The IGN editorial staff gathers at the end of each year to discuss and vote on the best games, movies, and shows form the last twelve months. To announce nominees and winners, the design team creates distinctive branding with a cohesive theme that can be used on social media and other O&O content.

My Role

I lead art direction and execution of Best of 2020's branding. I collaborated with the entire design team composing of editorial and motion designers. From ideation to physical award designs, I had my hand in every step of the lifecycle.

inspiration + direction

For 2020's direction, I created two style proposals for editorial leads. The first was centered around pastel colors and imagery using a bullet journal theme. The goal was to divert attention from the challenging year and to have a more cheerful tone. The second had a darker more toxic-slime feel that gravitated towards the concept of survival and preservation. The grungy textures and hand-drawn elements evoked a feeling of vulnerability.

FInal style guide

The final approved style guide was an amalgamation of the two proposals. The color palette worked on both dark and light backgrounds and I was able to keep that sweet, sweet toxic slime color. For visuals there was still a scrappy, DIY tone with sprinklings of grungy texture and hand-drawn elements.

Logo ideation

final logo

final logo + motion

To accompany graphics, I drew a doodles to reference a few of the stand-out nominees.

homepage deck theme

I designed a deck theme for IGN's homepage to celebrate the Best of 2020. With some assistance from my manager, I was able to code the theme and integrate it with Optimizely.

title cards

social media

With support from the editorial design team, we designed banners and video thumbnails to give our social media a cohesive look.

Takeaways

This was the largest project that I had the opportunity to lead with from start to finish. I was able to work with a variety of teams spanning from editorial and engineering. Communication was a crucial aspect of achieving effective cross-team cooperation. As a result, the 2020's Best of event went smoothly with minimal crunch time and beautiful results.