Responsive Branding, Illustration & Font Design
Whether you have heard of Troy Baker or not, you’ve probably heard his voice at least a few times. Troy is one of the world’s top voice actors. From Batman Animated Feature Films to industry-changing game titles like Bioshock and The Last of Us, Troy’s voice has graced the eardrums of millions of people for over a decade. Troy came to me looking to create a vision and identity for his online community/podcast network, “Relater.” Together we crafted a brand built around telling deep, meaningful stories while maintaining a clean and timeless esthetic that he can implement from his HQ in Los Angeles. This brand is designed to fit every piece of content that Relater’s community creates, from interviews with gaming’s best writers like Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross to down-to-earth podcasts with comedian Pete Holmes. Relater’s brand is a flexible storytelling toolbox.
DEPTH & UTILITY
The brand’s core icon is an abstraction of the Hegelian dialectic, representing the two sides of a conversation and the place in the middle where we meet and find understanding. This mark gives a great definition of what Relater is all about; bringing people of different backgrounds together to have a meaningful conversation and turn that into meaningful stories. Troy also happens to have this mark tattoed on his forearm, which gives this approach a much deeper humanity and meaning.
As a secondary definition, the three circles of the mark also represent the three distinct ways that Relater aims to tell stories. Conversation (Talk), Video Games (Game) & Play (Music & other creative mediums). The icon was designed to transform between its core form and three variations that represent one of these core communication methods. This transformation gives the icon a huge amount of depth while still being fairly simple visually.
Accompanied by wordmarks inspired by utilitarian typefaces and hand-drawn scripts throughout the decades, The brand balances modern minimalism with engaging storytelling character.
DEPTH & UTILITY
While the brand is designed to be elegant and simple, I also intentionally built the brand to be flexible and expressive when necessary. Video thumbnails and modern smooth animation create a beautiful visual language that ties everything together distinctly and recognizably.
As a creative, it’s easy for me to come up with ideas. Ideas are cheap. The expense is found in the execution. Having someone who can not only partner with me, understand and execute my vision is invaluable. The ability to wrangle my abstract thoughts into tangible and relatable assets was the very thing I was missing and the very thing Zach gave me. He manifested my vision into bite sized components that helped establish the very ethos of my brand. He did it with originality and without sacrificing the integrity or intent of my original idea. He simply made it better. He made it real.
TROY BAKER – ACTOR/DIRECTOR/CONTENT CREATOR
As a creative, it’s easy for me to come up with ideas. Ideas are cheap. The expense is found in the execution. Having someone who can not only partner with me, understand and execute my vision is invaluable. The ability to wrangle my abstract thoughts into tangible and relatable assets was the very thing I was missing and the very thing Zach gave me. He manifested my vision into bite sized components that helped establish the very ethos of my brand. He did it with originality and without sacrificing the integrity or intent of my original idea. He simply made it better. He made it real.
