Valorant Champions 2021

Valorant
Champions

A motion visual territory
for the world's best esports tournament

CLIENT
Riot Games

STUDIO
Massive Assembly

ROLE
Art Direction
Type Design
Graphic Design

EXPERTISES
Branding
Typography
Activation
Motion Graphics

SECTOR
Esport
Video Game
Entertainment

Valorant Champions is a premier esports competition for the FPS (first-person shooter) video game Valorant, managed and organized by the developer themselves Riot Games. Valorant Champions 2021 was the first world championship for Riot’s hit tactical shooter: Sixteen teams from across the globe clashed for the coveted $1m prize pool and the title of Valorant world champion.

This year, the final tournament took place in December in Berlin, Germany. Riot wanted to create an evolution on the global visual territory through a teaser, a trophy film and an add-on commercial across all platforms including social media. This was an opportunity to create a visual language that will touch the heart of every player around the planet.

For this fresh artistic direction, I opted for a system of kinetic typography between sound and space. The visual metaphor of an echo that spreads through a physical medium. These typographic waves offer the competition a rich and varied visual territory that articulates between information and content. New design guidelines were defined for all top-level information to simplify the ease of reading, also allowing more space for illustrative and narrative content.

DESIGN DEV

The echo of Champions

DESIGN SYSTEM

A narrative iconographic and title system

ARTISTIC RESEARCHES

A typography first territory

Numerous typographic explorations have enabled me to determine the most suitable compositional principles for the dissemination of both straightforward as well as complex information.

The scientific models of acoustic visualisation were an essential frame of reference for the artistic development of the "Champions" identity.

SOCIAL & INTERACTION

A social echo

A series of posts and stories were developed in collaboration with the in house concept artists for various social media platforms.

Fired up !

Online activations created strong engagement with the esports community in the lead up to the event.

CREDITS

Client
Riot Games

Studio
Massive Assembly

Creative Direction
Jason Yeh
Eugene Seo

Concept Art
Arthur Chen Yuan
Mikail Il
Jannes Ennen
Mariia Menshikova
Andrei Khrutskii

2D Animation
Yuee Seo
Murilo Almeida
Champ Panupong Techawongthawon

3D
Dima Flood
Axl Le
Ronaldo Amador
Yuee Seo
Neil Hilken

Type Direction
Suleyman Yazki
Jun Hong

Producing
Shannon McMahon
Mariia Menshikova
Ingviled Friss Bjerkeli

Creative Producer - NMBRS
Victor Hedström

3D - NMBRS
Alexander Waxin
Fedor Zaplatin
Zhi Lu
Liu Zeliang
Egor Gavrilov

Compositing - NMBRS
Jamie Wandroph

Storyboard
Frankell Baramdyka

Compositing
Ronaldo Amador

Edit
Dan Gillette
Victor Hedström
Murilo Almeida

Color
Jason Yeh

Sound by
Cypher

VO
Patrick Forbes