Role

Lead brand designer on the Brand Marketing team at Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media.

Discovery

Research & Exploration

• Review & compose creative brief with marketing director and stakeholders

• Research and consider existing brand story and components

• Partner with production game team art director, producer, UI/UX designers, artists, game designers and other relevant stakeholders for alignment on in-game and external brand

• Maintain transparent communication throughout the entire brand process with all stakeholders, partners and peers to develop buy-in, excitement and brand pride from the team

Brand History

In the early 2000s, the world needed a safe place for kids to play online. Three dads from Kelowna, B.C., Canada started to make that happen, and over the years, Disney’s Club Penguin grew into a snowy island where over 200 million penguins from 170 countries played.

In 2016, we rebranded it as Club Penguin Island for a new, mobile audience. We wanted this place to be recognized as the premiere destination for kids!

Club Penguin Island was a new product for an established brand. Our strategy was to build on our solid brand equity by keeping the Club Penguin name and referencing brand elements from the past.

Logo Concepts

Inspiration board

Goals: beloved penguin elements + fresh, modern, fun, adventurous, destination, 3D

Concept 1

Navigate & Discover

Adventure and story lead the way!

The star symbol is often used to denote navigation, classification and award systems, and more. The star shape is sprinkled in-game (UI, Boardwalk mosaic), and can be woven into the island’s narrative. 

This logo’s form allows a flexibility for unique sub-brand iconography.

Concept 2

The Place To Be

Adventure is here! This logo concept incorporates in-game iconography and the map system, and heavily considers the destination as a crucial part of the brand identity. 

With simple and friendly form, it speaks to “place” and represents a mindset of arrival. 

Concept 3

New Horizon

Adventure as far as the eye can see… the form here is reminiscent of a horizon; the curve feels friendly and approachable, but not fussy. Subtle texture on the letters indicate depth and playfulness. 

Concept 4

Classic Stack

(CHOSEN DIRECTION)

A visually recognizable shape with the word “club” remaining large and prominent, this logo feels familiar, but new.

“Club Penguin” stands on its own with a color treatment to distinguish the friendly, new, tropical feel of “Island.”

Logo Completion

Once our main logo form was chosen, we considered the logo rendering style and motion. This allowed us to communicate that our brand was expressive and alive.

A Responsive Brand

Logo System

Our product was a mobile game, thus our logo needed to be mobile-friendly (responsive) and platform agnostic. It also needed to be legible and feel good whether it was viewed in-game, on web or in external marketing applications on mobile, tablet, desktop or tv.

Responsive logos must adapt to different sizes and formats. Visit here for a great demo of this ideology.

A Global Brand

Localization

Our game was localized into four different languages. To ensure brand cohesion and efficient, clear communication with our localization design support team, we created comprehensive instructions to demonstrate how to build the logo design.

14 variations of the responsive brand mark was localized into the 4 supported languages.

Brand System

A brand is more than a logo

A logo cannot tell the entire brand story and communicate its values in a single mark. Logos should be simple and clear memory hooks. A logo is part of an identity system.

Our identity system included colour, slogans, and emblems, rich, original content and a robust brand toolkit to extend our story & engage audiences.

Brand tile

Brand extension

For the product’s entire life cycle, from geo-beta, to launch to post launch, our team created original content for our website, blog, and social channels. Throughout every stage, we tested and optimized our creative by working closely with our Disney user acquisition strategy team.

Social Support

To ensure community engagement, we created authentic content for our brand social channels. Content included Island Insider videos, post templates, game capture & direction, social gifs & static images.

Welcome Emails

We also supported the brand with community focused email campaigns.

Trailers

Teaser Trailer

Launch Trailer

Launch Trailer Results
(from March 30, 2017)

• Over 458,626 people reached

• 147,523 unique views

• 16,758 reactions, comments & shares

Events

We supported many live-action events and media takeovers with brand assets.

World Penguin Day

Website

We provided brand content and brand direction support for our new website redesign. We also provided brand assets for each campaign phase, as well as on-going post-launch content update communication support.

Launch website update results

• Over 1.3 million visitors in the first 30 days

• 45% new visits

• 00:01:50 average time spent

Lessons

Club Penguin Island taught us about the value of engaging a community, new content update strategies, mobile game subscription model best practices, using data for creative optimization, and communicating for both parents & kids.

Content shown © Disney.