How do you iterate on a brand you built—and already made renowned?

That's the question I faced when, after six years, Don't Park on the Grass—a Super Smash Bros. tournament in Seattle—was coming back. I had done the original branding for DPG in 2016 and minor revisions in 2018, but pulling a six-year-old brand off the shelf was not going to suffice.

The answer was to give the brand a comprehensive new coat of paint. The familiar logo structure and Dream Land–inspired logo shape stayed but with a more cohesive design. The colors were tweaked to be more vibrant, trading in spicy brown mustard for key lime pie and a kiss of orange. The type palette was refreshed to allow for a wider set of brand expressions. (Using Ferryman was so much fun!)

We reached our attendee cap much sooner than expected, so we had a higher share than normal of communications to existing attendees rather than marketing messages. Getting all of them across required an inventive visual mix.

That sort of communication priority went into the wayfinding. We had rooms on four floors of the Husky Union Building and had to implement a comprehensive wayfinding program in addition to conveying to attendees that we had event experiences outside the main ballroom, which could only hold about 60% of our attendees at any given time. There were more than 50 unique pieces of signage, ranging from signs for pool stations to a full-height standee.