Discord Brand Design System & Brand Guidelines

Guidelines made in 2021 with AKQA in close collaboration with the Discord team. For some, Discord is just a good place to talk or study. For others, it’s a secret lair full with everyone from gamers to birdwatchers. The platform means so much and many different things to its community of 150 million people. So how do you even begin to describe this indescribable world? You let the users do the explaining.

In order to tell the stories the way they were told the brand design language has taken distinct cues from the design language used in the product of Discord. On a higher level you will recognize geometric shapes that define users, community and content in the core components. On a more granular level you will notice that details such as a user’s status or an active community. It’s all designed to be playful yet purposeful. The dotted pattern, or the "Community Pattern”, symbolizes the users of Discord. It is playing a key role in the way that we visualize our communications. 

The main purpose of the Community Pattern is to emphasize the idea that our users are behind everything happening on Discord.This rebranding work was part of a repositioning of the brand where the new brand line ‘Imagine A Place’ played a key role in every execution.

The storytelling device we have defined is open for interpretation but still confined to certain styles and ideas. We created a brand design system where mixed art creations made with 2D and 3D illustrations were placed into the real world. Every creation is driven by user stories.

AKQA

Hugo Barne, Arendse Rohland, Noe Sato, Thor Hedegaard, Lexington Baly, Erik Herrström, Gijs van de Wal, Shiko Mura, Christian Detken, Hannah Portner, Bethany Wong, Boris Loeve, Elise Hagedoorn, Evan Dunn, Mark Toal Lennon, Geoff Northcott, Alex Rose, Miriam Plon Sauer, Nicolai Smith, Peter Lund

Discord

Tesa Aragones, Bemnet Yemesgen, Tory Grove, Molly Kosty, Mark Donnelly, Kenny Layton, Eric Barnett, Elisa Marin, Mindy Day, Amo Zhou, Justin Middendorp, Elie Dagher, Fiona Tran, Jackie Chen, Kevin Dam

Koto

Koto played a key role early in the process to define the core brand elements such as the symbol, wordmark, blurple color and typeface choice.

Production House:

Passion Paris