Year: 2023–Present
Project: Video Game Branding
Client: Fernando Restituto
Scope: Creative Direction | Graphic Design
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* Work in progress. Final deliverables may slightly differ from what is shown.
HOW IT STARTED
I first met Fernando in 2022, when he came to the Peer Tutor Lab at the George Brown College School of Design (where I was a peer tutor) looking for a design review. He was in the early stages of developing Team Hero Coder and needed a fresh perspective.
I gave him creative input about layout, proportions, colour theory, and character creation. He kept coming back, and what started as an informal review became an ongoing creative partnership and a friendship.
As an independent developer balancing the project with a full teaching load at George Brown, Fernando moves at his own pace, and so does our work.
I gave him creative input about layout, proportions, colour theory, and character creation. He kept coming back, and what started as an informal review became an ongoing creative partnership and a friendship.
As an independent developer balancing the project with a full teaching load at George Brown, Fernando moves at his own pace, and so does our work.
THE GAME
A lifelong fan of classic RPGs like Final Fantasy, Fernando wanted Team Hero Coder to feel like an adventure with quests to conquer. He structured it as a battle between two parties whose movements are decided by a series of coding challenges that build on one another. The further you level, the more complex the coding becomes, and the more rewarding the journey.
THE BRIEFING
It was a smart conceptual foundation, but the execution felt flat and unbalanced. A decision tree is about variation and evolution, and the design wasn't showing that. And it only reflected how the game works, not how it looks.
THE PROBLEM
THE LOGO
The decision tree nodes were integrated into the letterforms, implying the integration of gaming and learning. Varied in size and colour, they embody the core ideas of growth, change, movement, and evolution, with the letter D showing as a growing node.
The bracket, a common coding symbol, is an optional element that reinforces the game's identity without overpowering it.
The result is a logo that is fun, dynamic, balanced, and built to work across every format the project demands.
THE TAGLINE
The game will be available on Steam, so I made the case that it needed one that could speak to two very different audiences at once: RPG gamers and coding students.
The result was Create. Code. Conquer.
Three punchy words, working as a call to action and telling the learning quest from the start to the final boss.
APPLICATIONS
STEAM ASSETS
Fernando and I had flagged several competing titles with overcrowded, hard-to-read assets that were getting lost in the crowd. The goal was to make Team Hero Coder impossible to miss.
The solution was a design system built for consistency and legibility. The green code background narrates the transition from code to pixel. The logo is clearly readable in any size or orientation, and its variations keep the identity fresh without losing coherence.
A game that stands out at a glance, wherever it appears.
THE OUTCOME
Although there aren't quantifiable results yet, the new identity landed exactly where it needed to. Fernando has shared that it captures everything he envisioned for the project, and everyone who has seen it—from game developers and beta testers to educators in the design industry—has responded with enthusiasm.
Nothing beats the moment I sent him an asset, and he replied: "o.m.g."
"She's not just the top of her class; she works independently to comprehend a challenge and go beyond basic job requirements to complete the task at hand. (...) These elements are critical to ensuring the success and the income stream of my project."
— Fernando Restituto, Developer, Team Hero Coder