Riot Games (2019)Copied

Riot Games is the company behind League of Legends, one of the biggest esports titles anywhere, yet for more than a decade it wore a logo that looked like a tag scrawled on a school desk. Creative Bloq described the original, drawn in 2006 by the company's art director, as the word RIOT in a sort of graffiti style with a little fist. In April 2019 Riot replaced it for the first time in more than a decade, as ComicBook.com reported.

Riot's explanation, quoted by both outlets, was practical. When the old logo was made, the world was full of flip phones, and nobody thought about readability in apps or how the mark would scale. It was recognisable, but ComicBook.com noted that it held up poorly on the platforms League players actually use, such as Twitch and Reddit. As Riot put it, technology changed and the company began playing in new environments, so the logo it had grown fond of needed a rework.

The rework kept the ingredients and rebuilt them. Creative Bloq reported that the new logo was designed in house with input from the founders and the chief executive, aiming to capture the spirit of the original. The fist was flipped from left handed to right handed and separated from the wordmark so it can stand alone. It is drawn to mirror the R of Riot Games, and the wordmark still has a hand drawn feel but is more angular and much easier to read. Riot published a diagram showing how the logo's angles relate, which Creative Bloq teased as design nonsense, but adorable design nonsense.

Staff were candid about the old mark. A Riot employee quoted by ComicBook.com joked that the logo no longer looked like it was made of raw beef, and recalled that the company once told partners its brand was urban and its logo graffiti like. Riot itself admitted the new version might take time to get used to and said it would roll out gradually.

This is a good example of a rebrand that respects its audience. Gamers are notoriously hostile to change, and keeping the fist was the right call. Pulling it out as a standalone symbol gives Riot something it never had: a mark that works as a tiny avatar or a stream overlay. Mirroring the R ties symbol and wordmark together without making them depend on each other. The angular lettering does lose the scrappy energy of the original, but that energy came with a cost in legibility, and for a company of Riot's size the trade is worth making.