The Sims: Stay Up

The Sims quarterly campaign wanted a look that was part vaporwave and part Apex Legends season 10.

Role
Visual Designer

Agency
OK Dave

Client
Electronic Arts

Date
February 2022

THE PROBLEM

Every quarter The Sims 4 gets an update to keep their player base engaged. This quarter they wanted something to target the older players and had very specific inspiration to work from. They also needed a way for each pack in the update to feel independent from but cohesive with the core campaign brand.

THE SOLUTION

Work within The Sims guidelines to create a haunting and trendy style that can be applied to the various elements in their campaign launch. Each pack will need it’s own colour palette and icon but will still need have common properties with the main campaign.

Style guide, campaign style, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Designer, Animation, Motion Graphics, Canadian, Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Gibsons, BC, guideline, Branding, brand identity, Sims, EA, Stay Up, Game Industry, video games, Electronic Arts

There are several common elements that carry through to each pack. The Plumbob silhouette has a moon-like glow since the packs are all centered around the night and we brought in layers of texture—an asset from Apex Legends that the client loved. The neon light text treatment gives the characters a soft luminosity and hits that vaporwave style.

Style guide, campaign style, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Designer, Animation, Motion Graphics, Canadian, Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Gibsons, BC, guideline, Branding, brand identity, Sims, EA, Stay Up, Game Industry, video games, Electronic Arts
Style guide, campaign style, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Designer, Animation, Motion Graphics, Canadian, Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Gibsons, BC, guideline, Branding, brand identity, Sims, EA, Stay Up, Game Industry, video games, Electronic Arts

The Werewolves pack was an easy icon choice. Using the angular style pulled from the Plumbob’s structure, we made a simplified wolf head. The texture and colour implies a misty moonlit night with that bright pop of pink for the highlights.

Style guide, campaign style, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Designer, Animation, Motion Graphics, Canadian, Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Gibsons, BC, guideline, Branding, brand identity, Sims, EA, Stay Up, Game Industry, video games, Electronic Arts
Style guide, campaign style, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Designer, Animation, Motion Graphics, Canadian, Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Gibsons, BC, guideline, Branding, brand identity, Sims, EA, Stay Up, Game Industry, video games, Electronic Arts

For the Paris pack we focused on the city of love with a moon and heart icon. We tried an Eiffel Tower option but decided that the romance took priority over the location. The texture is a starry night with a city haze overlay with love-based colours.

Style guide, campaign style, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Designer, Animation, Motion Graphics, Canadian, Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Gibsons, BC, guideline, Branding, brand identity, Sims, EA, Stay Up, Game Industry, video games, Electronic Arts
Style guide, campaign style, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Designer, Animation, Motion Graphics, Canadian, Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Gibsons, BC, guideline, Branding, brand identity, Sims, EA, Stay Up, Game Industry, video games, Electronic Arts

The kids camp pack revolves around a summer campfire. The icon is a pared-down fire which we tried adding some extra flame details to but it felt out of place with the rest of the set. The colours are nature-based with a smoke texture overlay.

Style guide, campaign style, Graphic Design, Visual Design, Designer, Animation, Motion Graphics, Canadian, Vancouver, Sunshine Coast, Gibsons, BC, guideline, Branding, brand identity, Sims, EA, Stay Up, Game Industry, video games, Electronic Arts

Results

The internal team at EA was great to work with and had lots of helpful feedback during this process. It ultimate led to an excellent campaign launch that they loved so much they came back for help with their next quarterly update, too!

Learning Outcomes

One challenge was getting ahold of the in-game assets to experiment with during the beginning explorations of the brand. They obviously keep a tight leash on those and it takes man-power on their side to export them for us. They hired an external crew for this project to alleviate their already busy team so we wanted to minimize the burden on them. However they needed detailed descriptions on what we needed like which Sim wearing what and what view of them, from the top or from straight on, looking at you or not? This ended up resulting in hesitation from us and we ultimately walked in circles until we found the right assets. If I could do it over I would have a quick meeting with the people in charge of exporting the assets and explain what I was looking for so they could quickly give me a range of options and not have to think about it again.