Call of DutyCopied

Call of Duty debuted in 2003 as a PC game and grew into what Creative Review called a global entertainment empire, selling over 425 million units. By 2023 it had countless sub-brands, a new premium title every year, Warzone, esports and partnerships, and a franchise wordmark essentially unchanged in two decades. The challenge, Creative Review reported, was to balance distinct identities for each series with unity across the franchise, speak to a diverse player base and keep the essence of the brand.

The answer came from a two-year collaboration with Koto: a new franchise logo, a masterbrand identity and guidelines, and a custom typeface, Hitmarker. Koto says the refreshed wordmark replaced Impact, a decades-old typeface that had become meme-famous. Hitmarker is a variable face, inspired by military heritage and modern gaming, designed with a type foundry to work across the whole franchise and support more than 300 languages, from marketing and social to web and live game experiences.

Motion principles were written around the franchise's intensity, which Koto described as rapid-fire thinking, sprinting towards objectives and harsh recoil. The system was built to stretch across in-game UI, packaging, merchandise, seasonal campaigns, esports, philanthropy and partnerships, so collaborators as different as Snoop Dogg and Skeletor could plug in. The work also supported launches including Modern Warfare II and III, the Warzone Mobile identity, seasonal identities and the Haunting in-game event.

Koto describes the result as the first truly unified Call of Duty identity, consolidating two decades of fragmented growth into one scalable system.

Creative Review laid out the scale of the problem. Since 2003 Call of Duty had grown from a single PC game into a franchise selling more than 425 million units. The brief had three tensions: let series keep their identities while uniting the franchise, speak to a diverse player base, and keep the essence of the existing brand. After two years the answer was a franchise logo, masterbrand guidelines and a variable typeface, Hitmarker, drawn from military heritage and supporting more than 300 languages. Systems, not swagger, were the deliverable.

That is the achievement. Replacing a meme-famous wordmark on one of the biggest entertainment brands in the world while keeping its essence takes discipline. Hitmarker gives the franchise an ownable voice where it had a default font, and the masterbrand thinking brings order to a chaotic annual cycle. It is not glamorous work, but it is exactly the infrastructure a franchise this big needed.