ThePrinceAlii is an up and coming Twitch Streamer, primarily streaming games & community based activities. He has currently amassed over 700+ followers within 1 year of streaming.
My Role
Solo Digital Designer
Brief
Redesign twitch overlays and provide new digital assets for use in twitch streaming to increase viewership count
Programs Used
Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Blender
Timeframe
3 Months
Responsibilities
Logo Design, Screen Overlays, 2D Animation, Icons, Badges, Alerts
1. Why Redesign?
Background
ThePrinceAlii; an entertainer, comedian, and gamer, is in urgent need of a full, head to toe redesign of his twitch streaming brand. Ali wants fresh, new, personalized designs to both commemorate the community he has built thus far, as well as to promote an eye-catching and professional look for newcomers. Nicknaming his community his PRYD (P-Positivity, R-Respect, Y-You, D-Dedication), Ali is looking for a new look that plays on this lion theme, as well as his desired art style and sensibilities.
After expressing his idea for a redesign in his community discord, I happily volunteered to help.
2. The Problems?
Problem Statement
Follower count and viewership has been on a recent plateau. Having felt amassed a solid community thus far, a redesign of his Twitch brand was his idea to both commemorate his community and to better advertise himself to outside viewers, thereby hopefully increasing follower count and viewership.
Old Screen Overlay Designs:
3. Research & Brainstorming
Competitive Research
Two streamer names came to mind when discussing his inspirations and goals for streaming. While being some of the top streamers on Twitch, Ali would constantly look to them for inspiration: Nickmercs & Repullze. He admired them for not only being professional entertainers, but mainly for the communities that they were able to build. Nickmercs currently ranked #23 on Twitch, has amassed over 6 million followers with an average viewership of 27,000+, while Repullze currently ranked #3037 on Twitch, has amassed over 219,000 followers with an average viewership of 750+ viewers. Like these top streamers, Ali too streams similar gaming content to a similar viewer demographic of 18 and up. Unlike them however, Ali streams with a focus on community building activities and events, stressing his unique PRYD motto.
We reviewed both streamers and took into account how their overlays played in with the content being streamed. We came to realize some key visual design similarities that we felt helped contribute to overall viewer interest/engagement.
Key Visual Design Similarities
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A clear & cohesive design theme
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Strong high contrast & saturated colors
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Animated graphics
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Personalized viewer badges/alerts
Inspiration Moodboard
4. Design Process
Screen Overlays
With an approved logo design, I went onto designing the screen overlays. Ali needed 5 overlay screens in total; starting soon, be right back, stream offline, community game night, and the main camera overlay. He expressed he wanted the main title screens to have the same format but with subtle animated movements, and for his social media icons to be personalized to fit the new design. However, for the starting soon screen and the stream offline screen, he wanted there to be additional animations for a proper intro and outro sequence. He also requested a transition animation in between screens. From there, I started out with very rough sketches and we would discuss the design and motion ideas that I thought had potential, making note of the ones he expressed interest in.
Ultimately we decided that the best course of action would be to use the previous title screen layouts as templates and update them to a more updated style, combining the twitch gaming aesthetic with elements of geometric design.
Final Screen Overlay Designs:
Badges & Alerts
Ali and I agreed that to provide further incentive for viewers to follow or subscribe, personalized badges and alerts were a must. With a lion theme already established, we discussed design ideas. With some quick sketches, I pitched some ideas to him and we were able to land on two concepts.
For viewer badges, there were two logos needed; subscription & bits donated. For the subscription badge, Ali wanted a simplified logo reflecting the lion theme, with the colors denoting the overall time the user has been subscribed. And for the bits donated badge, he wanted a logo that resembled the crown in the new logo design, with the colors denoting the amount of bits donated.
For the alerts, Ali wanted a simple 3D animation of the designs chosen. Here I came up with the idea for a simple 360 motion with a glowing effect to emphasize the primary color.
Visual System
5. Impact
Results
To measure the impact my new designs had, we compared the analytics of his most recent stream using the old designs, and his first stream using the new designs. Specifically, the viewership impact and follower/subscription impact. Upon observing the analytics of both streams, we came to a conclusion that the redesign was a success, showing a significant increase in overall viewership.
Key Takeaways
Trust the Process
At times during the design process, I found myself running with ideas to an almost finished product instead of trusting the process of going through early stage iterations. Although for the most part the client liked my designs, trusting the early stages can prevent any unnecessary work done in the future.
