Video Game Sage | Branding, Web Design, Development & Packaging

Overview

Video Game Sage is a community dedicated to preserving the joy of classic video games. We have an open source philosophy of documenting and sharing our knowledge and compiling it on our message boards.

The site was originally built by Doug Glover using templates. I was brought on along with Tyler Pacana to help build the visual identity of the brand.

My Role

Brand/Web Design
Front End Development
Copywriting

Team

Doug Glover — Art Direction
Tyler Pacana — Illustration

Deliverables

Logo Design
Visual Identity
Home Page (Adobe XD)
Copywriting
Front End Web Dev (HTML, CSS)
Package Design

Making Our Mark

The logo design was inspired by some prominent monograms from the 80’s (WWF, Van Halen).

I took a notch out of the bottom corner of the G and S to suggest pixels, referencing classic video games.

Bringing It Home

After the logo was well received, I was asked to help design a new home page for the site.

The character illustrations were created as representations of the various kinds of people who join the community.

The design of the homepage is meant to highlight these characters, and show the user that regardless of what aspects of the hobby they enjoy, they are welcome to join.

A Roadblock

There was one issue though. We didn’t have anybody to code the page! Doug is a Web Developer, but he had just started a new job and takes care of general back end stuff for this site, he didn’t have the bandwidth to take this on.

I have some knowledge of front-end web development, but I wouldn’t call myself a developer. I volunteered to code the site, hoping the project would help me learn more about coding and to get this shipped sooner than later.

With a little trial and error, and a lot of googling, I was able to create a pretty good result! I feel much more confident as a developer as a result.