The LCS was the original professional League of Legends (LoL) league. It pioneered professional esports, and its quest for validation in a traditional landscape drove the LCS to show up as a carbon copy of ESPN, but for video games. After eight years, the league has huge viewership and a rich fan culture. It was time the LCS stopped trying to be anyone else, and finally became true to itself.

Design explorations began in June 2020, beginning with six, insight-led creative territories and over the course of 3 months culminating in the LCS mark and current brand. We created a brand book, developed the brand’s tone of voice, and defined the brand’s content strategy. And finally we wrote, shot, and produced a launch film that was released to the world on January 5, 2021.

The LCS is more than just the competitive heartbeat of League of Legends: It’s the center of a culture of its own that is made up of players and fans, cosplayers and creators, musicians, gamers, artists, and more. With this rebrand and launch of “Made by Many,” we took the culture that this league has created over the last decade and reimagined the content, logo, motion, type, and each individual element to be a better reflection of how this culture has grown and where it’s going next.

The rebrand stamps a new kind of legitimacy for the league, serving the players and fans instead of seeking to fit in with traditional sports media. For a long time, LCS fans have been asking for a visual platform that is more in-line with their culture that allows them to see themselves in it.

The new brand imprint was borne out of a close collaboration with the creative team at Riot Games. It references the Summoner's Rift map, the league trophy, a fingerprint, a flame, and of course, monograms the letters LCS.

From this mark, we built a graphic system where each piece forms a part of our new story for the LCS. The color system balances the league and its teams, a typographic superfamily expresses a broad range of emotions, graphic patterns infuse a jolt of the game's energy, motion design is (literally) breakthrough, and refractive visuals reflect the many sides of this multidimensional league.

Extensive guidelines set the stage for a complete overhaul of the league's broadcast package brought to life by Troika & Capacity Studios alongside Riot's team. Our launch film, directed by Allie Avital, celebrates the league's legacy and ushers in the new era, setting everyone's eyes on the future.

As the largest eSports league in North America, the launch video was seen by millions, the brand analyzed by sites like Under Construction as well as by legions of fans on Twitter and Reddit, dominating the eSports conversation leading up to the launch of the 2021 season on January 15, 2021.

The inaugural season of the new LCS is currently underway, but initial indicators point towards an impressive league shift. Across the three weeks of their season-opening tournament, the league had an English average minute audience (AMA) of 196,000, and fans watched more than 9.4 million hours — that's 43% higher than the first three weeks of Spring 2020. The much-anticipated Finals had an AMA of 246,000 and peaked at 372,000 viewers on English-language broadcasts. (Source: “The LCS “Locks In” Impressive Viewership: Spring 2021 starts on a high” via lolesports.com).