Hidden Grove
I was contracted by Probably Monsters, a video game studio incubator to design a visual brand identity for a new AAA video game studio named Hidden Grove. The studio is noteworthy for having ex-Bungie veteran leaders who brought the highly acclaimed Halo and Destiny universes to life. I worked with Hidden Grove’s art director Jedd Chevrier and ProbablyMonster’s art director Joey Marin, first to design the logo, and then the brand guidelines. Hidden Grove is still developing an unannounced title, so I remain in excited anticipation until I can see the studio’s logo on a splash screen during the loading sequence for that future game.
Hiding, cuturally
Symbiotic existence
It was not possible to approach this project without thinking about trees, looking at trees in real-life, and indeed sketching trees. The studio’s name — Hidden Grove — was meant to invoke an image of a place of protection, growth (amplification), and collaboration. Excerpts of my moodboard that I shared with stakeholders meant to align us on two things:
1. What does something “hidden” or “hiding” look like?
2. What are some interesting modalities for trees/grov?
When looking at hidden things, I was drawn by the way some images, like a girl peeking up from behind something, or the screenshot from 1999’s Ghost in the Shell with Major Motoko Kusanagi’s hand wiping up before her face also becomes concealed by her thermoptic camouflage, “truncated” the object/person trying to hide. And of course, usually when something is “hidden” it is “under” something (a table, the ground, a hand). Those became the foundational visual motifs for this final direction of the logomark and influenced the choice for the brand’s primary font family and logotype (TWK Everett).
As far as trees go, I found something exceedingly nice about “bracing” trees, particularly images of Japanese hoozue supporting sprawling ancient tree limbs. So I wanted to instill that motif in the logomark, while using two shapes/pieces (to further signify cooperation). I also thought the phenomenon called inosculation (separate trees growing into one) represented both the “grove” and “amplification” parts of the brand’s culture — in a “stronger, together” kind of way.
This was one of my largest branding projects and took over 40 logomark sketches in the beginning. As tends to happen, a version of the final direction was one of my earliest concepts. There were three rounds of revisions that narrowed things down from five, to three, and then one direction, plus one more after a holiday break to adjust certain aspects of the chosen logomark and then I updated the brand guidelines accordingly.