OMEN FOR HP
DEMOCRATISING THE GAME. CREATING THE ICONIC.
Look at the PC gaming market and what do you see? A sea-of-same: products that look like the visions of frustrated supercar designers, branding straight from a teenager's sketchbook of ‘awesome logos’, and marketing that is overwhelmingly male biased.
It’s gaming that never grew up, and it’s no longer reflective of the player.
32% of PC gamers are female, it’s 46% for console. The 45 to 65-year olds are the fastest growing segment of players. More 13 to 15-year-old girls watch and participate in esports live than boys of the same age group. The average age for both male and female gamers is 35.
With statistics like this, the disparity between what’s being sold and who’s buying is clear.
In 2015, the design company Native was tasked with transforming HP’s desktop and laptop product lines. The result was the introduction of PHI – Progressive, Harmonious, Iconic - a completely new design language that would unify the brand and provide the strategy for all new product development.
PHI was not simply a product strategy, it was a holistic brand system that pushed for ever greater refinement and simplicity. It was these principals which were front-of-mind when, in 2019, my team and I were asked to redefine the language of gaming.
It’s always seemed crazy to me that a client should ask one company to undertake all the process and research required to design a product, but then to ask another to create a brand (requiring, in their opinion, further research), and yet another to devise marketing communications (with, guess what... more research).
I believe that true holistic design, where one activity seamlessly informs another, often in parallel, is key to the resulting creation and growth of an exceptional brand offering. This belief, combined with my clear vision for the OMEN brand, were central to the success of our cross-disciplinary team and renewed energy that OMEN now enjoys.
AN INFINITELY ADAPTABLE IDENTITY REFLECTING THE CHARACTER OF THE PLAYER AND THE GAME.
IN THESE E-SPORTS EXAMPLES, COMMS CHAMPIONS THE PLAYERS AS THE NEW ATHLETES.
Working with a hybrid team of engineers, industrial designers, CMF specialists, motion and sound designers, we undertook an in-depth study of contemporary gaming together with emerging & future behaviours.
Synthesised discoveries informed parallel workstreams in both physical and digital design iteration. Brand design informed product design and visa-versa, while communications ideas flowed directly from the original user research and technology innovations we were investigating.
Guidance from the client was that any new brand thinking should evolve from the original Voodoo brand mark, a tribal mask set within a diamond. The answer was ultimate simplicity.
The diamond symbol is known as ‘The Possible’. It represents the games and players of today and tomorrow as they move away from set-piece, formulaic environments into highly creative, free motion sandboxes. The Possible is a vessel that defines the new landscape of gaming – it can be whatever you want it to be.
BRAND THAT MOVES BEYOND SIMPLE ADORNMENT.
BRAND, PRODUCT AND EXPERIENCE DEVELOPED IN UNISON.
Developed in conjunction with product, The Possible was seamlessly integrated into the hardware, informing everything from machine-to-machine visual connection prompts to hinge and grill designs.
We wanted the symbol to be functional, not simply an adornment. To that end, ultra-thin LED screens were employed to back-light and allow animation to be worked into the mark. This provided amazing opportunity to create compelling human-machine interactions and personalisation possibilities.
The Possible also solved the problem of how to stand out in 50 pixels. Until clicked on, the majority of image search and e-commerce platforms reduce products to an almost meaningless size. In this environment, immediate visual cues are critically important, the simplicity and inherent high-contrast of the new OMEN branding provided them with the advantage.
In a market where design appears to be an arms race of who can shout the loudest and of who can be ‘more’, OMEN stands out through precision-applied restraint and a system built for everyone.
"The new diamond Omen logo and branding are extraordinarily strong and uniquely identifiable from the competition.
The diamond preserves the shape of the old logo, while making it seem cleaner and more refined - the theme of the whole system. The systems look better aesthetically and are more customizable and user-upgradeable—all while still delivering exceptional value.
I am genuinely impressed with what I’m seeing from HP in the new Omen line of desktops."
FORBES
MAY 2020
