Valorant VCT23 – Branding Refresh

Over the past three years, Riot Games' VALORANT has soared to become a dominant force in the competitive 5v5 FPS gaming world, while the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) has become one of the most-watched FPS Esports globally. To adapt to the expansion of the annual year long Championship series, Riot Games set out to transform the VCT design system into a versatile and comprehensive toolkit for the future.

As a design and motion partner for VALORANT and VCT since the launch of the game in 2020, Worship was tasked once again to work on this year's refresh and invited Tendril to join as a production, animation, and 3D partner to tackle this grand branding effort.

Together, we helped refresh the core broadcast design language, the logo system, the key artworks, and a new set of social, motion and marketing toolkits.

With over 1700 unique deliverables, the Championship had to be designed as a modular identity system for 10 sub-brands simultaneously, with executions for all the stages of the event; the Challengers series, Masters, Champions, Game Changers, LCQ, The International Leagues, as well as the evergreen VCT core brand.

The system was separated in 4 different categories, each created in 10 color variants for various stages of the Championship.

01-Identity

02-Key Art

03-Broadcast

04-Design toolkits: motion, social

01—Identity

Logos & graphic language

In addition to designing a hero lockup for 'VCT' and 'VALORANT CHAMPIONS TOUR'. An extended family of logos were designed for all the other VCT events, each with its own distinctive color scheme, all following the same hierarchical structure as the main brand.

Logo Animations

To ensure uniformity in the motion language across all events, the same signature animation style was used for each mark and will later inform the typography animation style for the motion toolkit.

02—Key Artworks

The previous VCT kits were based on a fixed set of illustrations from the VALORANT marketing materials. For this package, in order to maximize visual diversity and meet the needs of content releases throughout the season, we embarked on a mission to craft an entirely new collection of artworks to serve as a flexible and expandable library of backgrounds for all design kits.

Color variants were created for each event to ensure the artworks color match the primary and highlight colors used for each sub-brands' graphic and type design overlays.

Additionally, we generated a grittier textured version of each artwork to be used in different design toolkits where optimal contrast with typography and overlaid information is needed.

03—Broadcast toolkits

2023 introduced new events to the Champions Tour, providing players and fans with more opportunities to watch all of their favorite regional and international rivalries play out. The broadcast event is where the crux of the rebrand shines brightest. Throughout the year, an extensive set of design tools are used to seamlessly broadcast VALORANT matches around the globe in over 15 languages. Unforgettable events that combine spectacle with top-tier competition.

04—Design Toolkits

VCT is the highest level of competition you can see in esport. The matches are high-stakes, intense, and never predictable. It's a non-stop highlight reel. Keeping up with all the latest takes place on social channels in the forms of motion or stats highlights. The aim of the highlights is to convey the experience of attending a VCT event.

Aesthetically different than the broadcast work which is presented live and more fast-paced, the VCT social voice is even more vibrant, playful, authentic, and stylish.

Social toolkit

The toolkits are carefully crafted to accentuate the distinctive art direction and color scheme of each event, with a prominent focus on showcasing talents, players, and devoted fans at the forefront.

The colors, illustrations, images and text are editable via Figma, After Effect, and Photoshop templates to streamline the creative process for the content teams covering events worldwide.

below are some examples implemented by the VCT content team for their 'Champions' event in August 2023.

Motion toolkit

Watching all VCT matches is no small task. With multiple games taking place worldwide, sometimes simultaneously, social teams in each region furiously document, capture and edit daily video highlights during major events, ensuring that fans never miss the day's best plays and iconic wins. Our motion templates add branding and color-specific flair to these fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled highlight reels, capturing the energy and excitement of the events.

Thank you to Riot Games for inviting us to work on this huge undertaking, and congratulations to all participating teams! See you next year on the VCT.

Watch the 2023 season of the Valorant Champions Tour at https://valorantesports.com/watch

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Worship + Tendril

Production Company: Tendril Studio
Creative Director (Worship): Nicolas Girard, Rafael Ruiz
Creative Director (Tendril): Chris Bahry
Executive Producer: Ramona Gornik-Lee
Producer: Niko Hook
Coordinator: Andrea Chan
Directors: Worship (Nicolas Girard & Rafael Ruiz)
Art Director: Rafael Ruiz, Chloe Woo, Felix Soletic, Mike Zeng, Pedro Cruz, Toros Kose
CG Sup: Alexandre Veaux

Designer: Rafael Ruiz, Chloe Woo, Felix Soletic, Mike Zeng, Pedro Cruz, Toros Kose, Rafael Cruz, Rodrigo Rezende, Safeer Ali, Christian Hecht

Model and Texture: Tyrel Scott, Flavio Diniz
Rigging: Tyrel Scott, William Sharkey
FX: William Sharkey
3D Animation: William Sharkey
2D Animation : Pablo Lozano, Nicolas Girard, Rafael Cezar, Gabriel Rocha
2D Graphics Design: Rafael Ruiz, Pablo Lozano, Pedro Cruz, Rafael Cezar, Safeer Ali, Rodrigo Rezende, Nicolas Girard
Lighting and Rendering: Alexandre Veaux, Yeseong Kim
Compositing and Grading: Alexandre Veaux
Figma Compose: Henrique Athayde, Safeer Ali
Toolkitting: LOVATT

Valorant VCT23 – Branding Refresh

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Valorant VCT23 – Branding Refresh

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