A journey that shows how Glitch’s Branding has grown through the years with my help.
Visual Designer
When I joined GLiTCH back in 2015, it was a young organization that was still figuring out what it wanted to communicate to everyone yet determined to be different. But this left me with so much to work with, that I am thankful that I have had the chance to explore and develop my skills to a point where the association is now a popular image among students and well received by the university.
At the time there wasn’t really much cut out, no design guide, no clear message, just a wish and determination.
So I wanted to understand what that message was, and where that determination came from, little did I know, I’d end up with my eyes opened even further. As I talked with members and board members, I managed to understand that this wasn’t just any ordinary student organization, it was a special, tight family comprised of different backgrounds, ideas and hopes.
And that’s what it was trying to communicate, that despite we’re all from different places, we can still work together, have fun together and enjoy being together. The main, but not only form of doing that, was through games and technology.
So I set out to create a brand that told the story of being a group that’s different from the rest, and was comfortable being different from the rest and could still be cool and modern.
Together we created a simple image, a design that attracted that late gamer who stayed up late to play games with his friends, students who love creating games together with others, and the people that could bring that family warmth.
The brand followed a simple, thoughtfulness and fun idea. This was achieve through good use of typography, a less is more mentality to make our community the center of attention, and a combination of art and photography to showcase our diversity, creativity and determination.
To bring that message firsthand and show others who we were without telling them, we asked our university if we could be the first ones to greet incoming students how much fun we can have together.
Together with students, we worked together to create a bold yet friendly presence around the university by hosting events, gaming tournaments and more. We also joined student panels to listen to their problems, receive feedback and discuss ideas together. All the while, we sought to involve ourselves and everyone that was with us in the game industry.
And as we kept growing through the years, we created merchandise together to establish our presence in the school as a university of diversity and unitedness. Which has then grown to be more prevalent throughout the years with new designs and ideas.
In the end, we resulted with a growth of over 200% over a single year, that led to more students joining our organization to help or be together and being branded one of the university’s most diverse, favorite and boundary pushing organization lead by students. An achievement many of us were proud to carry.
A strong style guide, combined with a great mission can result in one of the most amazing experiences for all as long as those two are together.
Edwin Yanarico
GLiTCH ❤️