The challenge of redesigning a classic esports logo

When Sunny Bonnell and her team at brand agency Motto started working with Ninjas In Pajamas (NIP), a 20-year-old esports team in search of a new look, they did a lot of research. The team had never worked in gaming or esports before, and they wanted to understand space. They spoke to fans and team members and sketched out hundreds of possible logo ideas over the course of over a year. When NIP has revealed its new visual identity the reaction last month was immediate – and largely negative. “I don’t think we really knew at the time that fans would have such a hard time with that,” Bonnell says.

NIP was founded in 2000, and the Swedish organization currently manages teams in Valuing, FIFA, and rainbow six, although he is best known for his Counter strike team. Its old logo was a golden shuriken with lots of curves and sharp tips. The new iteration keeps the same concept but streamlines it, with a neon yellow on a black background and an angular shuriken that features a stylized version of the kanji for “nin” inside. It’s clearer, simpler and more easily recognizable.

Bonnell says the new logo was needed for several reasons. These include the flexibility to scale across different platforms, as well as the lack of contrast between the black and brown color scheme. “There were just a lot of technical issues with the existing brand,” she says. The challenge, she adds, was to create a logo that not only retained the classic iconography associated with the team, but also felt fresh and worked in a variety of mediums. “This brand must have made a lot of effort.”

When the team started working on the project, they really zoomed in on the ninja part of the name NIP. There are the kanji, as well as a color palette inspired by the streets of Tokyo, and even an audio element; the designers have come up with a signature blade sound that the team can use in videos and on social media. “I felt it was something they could really own,” Bonnell says of the ninja elements. “They lacked something to say. They had cool clothes and great teams, but they had nothing else that gave them a story to tell.

One of the challenges of modern logo design is to create something that can work just about anywhere. It’s particularly tricky in esports. The PIN logo is used as a Twitter icon, a badge on shirts and even a virtual sticker that players can put on in-game weapons. When returning from tournaments in person, the logo will be enlarged on the large LCD screens on stage . (Bonnell is especially excited about the latter. “It’s gonna be so cool.”) To create something that works in all of these settings, designers often resort to something flat and simple. The result is logos that tend to look the same.

“It gets trickier and trickier over time,” Bonnell says of the process. “The more you add, the more complicated it becomes.” The new PIN logo attempts to work around this problem in several ways. On the one hand, the shuriken is placed to the side to create an impression of movement, as if it were thrown. And although the logo is relatively simple, it is imbued with meaning, like the word hidden inside the weapon. Basically every item is meant to scream “ninja!”

Giving a new identity to an existing team is a delicate proposition. Just like in traditional sports, esports fans are committed to teams and their history. In fact, when Dignitas and Evil Geniuses, two long-standing organizations, introduced dramatic revamps, the outcry was so intense that they ended up reverting to their original logos.

Despite all the preparation, Bonnell says she wasn’t completely ready for the amount of ebb the PIN overhaul received. “There’s a lot of hate in esports that I don’t know if I was prepared for,” she says. “I had to stop reading the comments, because I was like ‘Oh my god I want to cry in my cornflakes.’ This is really bad. “

This has mellowed over time, she says. “The first day was tough,” she admits, but says as time went on and the logo was displayed in more settings – on jerseys, in actual games – she began to receive positive feedback from fans who have changed their minds. While other organizations may have struggled with the initial flashback, Bonnell doesn’t think that will happen with NIP.

“First they will be ridiculed,” she said, “then they will be worshiped.”