From a game to a franchise brand.

Since its creation in 2009, Minecraft has rapidly grown to become one of the world’s best-selling and most popular games with over 132 million players each month.

Ten years after its humble beginnings, Minecraft had outgrown the world of gaming – it’s a global phenomenon, and an entertainment franchise of similar complexity as Lego.

During this process, the brand around the Minecraft games and experiences started to feel fragmented and without clear direction.

During our (on-going) collaboration with the client team, we’ve created a complex yet playful identity for the whole franchise – a design system and philosophy that brings together all the many parts of the Minecraft universe, from games to services, tv shows, festivals, events, toys and partnerships.

Brief: Simplify and Amplify Our client Mojang Studios approached us with the request to create a future-proof brand strategy, architecture and a shared design philosophy that would help them guide the creative efforts of their teams, and partners. We were asked to unify the Minecraft brand to:

• Look, feel and behave in a distinctive way • Align colleagues & agencies around a simple set of guidance • Reduce duplication and fragmentation across the brand • Align the branding of all our digital and physical properties • Make the development of new properties as easy as possible • Ensure existing brand assets can sit alongside new

Design solution: A brand to be played with We wanted to create a brand identity for the whole franchise that was just as exciting as the game itself. An identity that people love to play with.

Just like in the game, the new design system is built around a simple pixel gid. It’s the foundation of the Minecraft design system and sits beneath every single asset of the brand, from logos to typography, from layouts to images.

The rigorous use of the pixel grid allows us to create a brand that feels like a natural extension of the game – it is even based on exactly the same resolution as the game (16x16).

While the pixel grid can be populated with our so-called blocks. Blocks can be logos, typography, images, characters and items and colours.

The blocks can be combined in many ways for endless creative freedom. With our pixel grid and blocks, we can build unique variations for all parts of the franchise and for all audiences.

An easy-to-use, intuitive design system that feels as diverse and open-ended as the game itself.