DESIGN
Jelly Splash
TECHSTACK
Branding
UX/UI
Illustration
Designing branding assets for a game is no easy task, especially when the variety of artwork you have to work with is limited. At Wooga, I experienced this struggle firsthand when tasked with creating marketing materials for Jelly Splash, one of the company's most successful games.
The game team had initially refused to let us create assets, fearing that they would be off-brand. But as we discussed the challenges and opportunities presented by the project, I realized that our team could bring a unique perspective to the game's branding.
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Taking into account the fears of the game team, I started experimenting and eventually designed some variants of the jelly characters that looked a bit more 3D-ish while still keeping the game's cartoonish spirit in mind.
The introduction of these new assets presented an intriguing alternative to the on-brand assets that had been utilized in our ad campaigns for some time. However, there was opposition to their use in our marketing efforts.
Despite the potential risks, we made the decision to include them in our next campaign. We were fully aware of the consequences if the ads featuring the 3D Jellies failed to meet our expectations - we would have to remove them and limit ourselves to using only the assets provided by the game team, thereby forfeiting a significant portion of our creative freedom.
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The real test came when the metrics were in. It turned out that the ads portraying the 3D-ish assets outperformed those using the original assets provided by the game team. And, similar to the blue jelly's reaction here, my response was also one of surprise.
This was a confirmation of the power of effective branding on one hand, as well as the importance of taking risks and pushing boundaries in design on the other.
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