Poker Club — Brand Identity

01 Brand Strategy Brief → Position → Decisions

01 — Overview

A brand that earns the chair before it deals the cards.

Poker is one of the loudest visual categories online. Every operator turns the dial to eleven — neon felt, screaming jackpots, all-caps urgency. The brief I got back was the opposite.

The client wanted somewhere serious players would actually want to play. Not a casino skinned in poker, not a stunt site chasing sign-up bonuses, but a club — with the discretion and confidence that word implies. My job was to build the whole identity from scratch and a campaign system tight enough that a two-person team could keep it running across markets without it drifting.

I worked on this as Senior Designer and Coordinator — leading the design itself, but also keeping creative, copy, dev, and compliance moving on the same beat.

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02 — The Challenge

Four problems landed on the table at the same time. The system had to answer all of them — not pick favourites.

Four problems.
One visual system.

No brand equity to lean on

Launching cold into a category dominated by names players already trust. From day one, the brand had to feel like it had history — not a startup pretending otherwise.

Two rooms, one front door

Live tournament players and online cash-game grinders behave differently and want different things from a brand. I needed one identity that read native to both without splitting in half.

Regulated everything

Every visual that goes out the door is subject to advertising standards across multiple jurisdictions. Bold had to also mean compliance-ready — which usually means restraint.

Small team, big output

Two designers shipping hundreds of assets a month across markets. The brand needed to be drift-proof — clear enough that anyone touching it could stay on tone without me in the room.

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03 — Strategic Decisions

The calls I argued for, and the ones I argued against. Each of these set the rules everything else had to follow.

The calls that
shaped the brand.

Decision

What was considered

Where I landed

Positioning

High-energy, "biggest bonuses" mass-market play, like everyone else in category.

Vintage luxury. Quieter, more deliberate. The brand wins by sounding like the only adult in a noisy room.

Colour

The expected route — emerald felt and casino red. Safe, but indistinguishable from the next twenty operators.

Imperial purple + old gold + gloss black. Reads as inherited wealth, not new money. Purple alone gives us the visual ownership most poker brands give up.

Logo

A clean modern wordmark — fast to read, easy to ship, totally forgettable.

An Art Deco crest. Stepped frame, suit row, deco type. It's a logo that asks to sit on a chip, a card back, a marble lobby sign.

Typography

A trendy geometric sans — neutral, present-tense, no story.

Limelight + Cormorant + Poiret. A type stack with weight, intention, and a clear nod to the era we're borrowing from.

Tone of voice

Aspirational lifestyle copy — moody men in tailoring, soft-focus chips, vague gestures at "the moment".

Player-first, low ego. Short lines, dry confidence. "Play your hand. We'll handle the room."

03 Campaign & Deliverables System · Social · Applications

05 — Deliverables

Seven outputs, all sitting on the same scaffold so the wider team could pick any of them up and stay on brand.

A full system.
Seven shipped pieces.

♠

Logo System

Full lockup, wordmark-only, monogram, reversed and monochrome — plus the clear-space and minimum-size rules that keep all of it readable in the wild.

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Colour System

Six-colour palette with usage ratios. Dark-first, with every text/background pairing tested for AA contrast before it shipped.

Type System

Display, editorial, and UI stacks. Hierarchy rules that scale from billboard down to in-app push notification without losing the brand.

♥

Campaign Creative

Launch art direction across two key hero visuals — tournament weekends and online cash. Same brand, two distinct moods.

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Social Templates

Feed and story templates for IG, X, and Facebook. Editable component-based files so the social lead could promo without needing a designer.

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Banner Series

Six standard IAB sizes, static + animated variants. Compliance-cleared, with copy variants for each regulated market.

❦

Brand Bible

Sixty-page guidelines doc — anatomy, usage, voice, do/don't, market-by-market notes. The artefact that let the system stay alive after I handed it over.

Social Templates — Sample

Brand in Application

A brand only matters once it touches something physical. Below — the two pieces that hit the highest-value moments: the card a member hands across the felt, and the paper a host signs for a tournament invitation.

Business Card Gold foil on 600gsm matte black

01 — Business Card

A card worth keeping.

The front carries the full crest in gold foil on a 600gsm matte black stock. The back uses the standalone monogram and a member number — handed across a felt table, the back is what the dealer sees first.

Designed for foil-blocking rather than print. The metallic finish was non-negotiable — a printed gold reads as bronze on matte black and undoes the entire luxury position.

02 — Letterhead

Correspondence, weighted.

Used only for tournament invitations, member-only correspondence, and formal compliance documents. Printed on 120gsm uncoated ivory stock — the paper does half the talking before the recipient reads a word.

The crest sits at 30mm from the top edge with the address block aligned to a strict 12-column grid. Body copy in Cormorant Garamond, 11/16pt, set in the brand's imperial purple rather than black.

Letterhead 120gsm uncoated ivory · A4

iOS Companion App iPhone 15 Pro · 393 × 852pt · 3 Screens

03 — Member Home

The lobby.

The screen a member opens on a Friday evening. A clear, focused hierarchy — greeting, tier identifier, one primary card for tonight's tournament, and a navigable list of rooms. The tab bar uses standard iOS conventions so the app feels native, while the brand expresses itself in the small moments: deco corners on the feature card, gold hairlines, the member's tier name on display.

04 — Live Tournament

The table.

An active hand. Every element earns its position — the Dynamic Island shows live state with a pulsing indicator and tournament timer; the hole cards are the largest UI element on screen because they're what matters most; the action buttons follow a strict hierarchy where Fold is the lightest, Call is medium-weight, and Raise carries the full gold so the primary action is unmistakeable even in fast play. Time-to-act bar gives a calm visual countdown without dominating.

05 — VIP Membership

The membership card, reimagined.

The tier badge is the hero — radial gold treatment on the monogram, surrounded by deco sunburst rays, framed by concentric hairline rings. Member tiers borrow the same vintage hierarchy as the chip set (Esquire → Courtier → Imperial → Sovereign → Regent), so the brand's naming system is consistent from physical chip to digital product. Stats row uses Limelight numerals against deco overlines; privileges are written in the brand voice — "Concierge Line", not "VIP Support". This is the screen that has to feel like a private club, not a loyalty program.

The Poker Club — five-denomination tournament chip set

Tournament Chip Set Ceramic 43mm · Five Denominations

06 — Tournament Chip Set

The brand you can hold.

A five-denomination ceramic chip set for live tournament play. Each denomination earns its own name from the brand's vintage register — Esquire, Courtier, Imperial, Sovereign, Regent — so the colour code is also a hierarchy you can hear at the table.

Every chip carries the standalone monogram inside a deco hexagonal frame on the face, with "THE POKER CLUB" set in Poiret One running across the upper arc. The $500 Sovereign and $1,000 Regent both use the inverse — gold face, black monogram — so the high-value chips read distinctly across a busy table at a glance.

04 Process & Outcome How it shipped

06 — Process

Ten weeks, zero to launch-ready. I was running the design and coordinating across copy, dev, and compliance, so the plan had to leave room for the conversations as much as the deliverables.

How a brand
gets built from nothing.

Wk 1–2

Strategy

Competitor audit, player interviews, positioning workshops with the founders.

Wk 3–4

Identity

Logo routes, colour exploration. Three concepts presented; landed on the Deco crest.

Wk 5–6

System Build

Full type, colour tokens, and a working component library in XD ready for dev.

Wk 7–8

Campaign

Launch art direction, banner series, social templates, market-specific copy variants.

Wk 9–10

Guidelines

Brand bible. Usage rules. Multi-market adaptation. Handover sessions with the team.

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07 — Outcome

The brand shipped on time, on brief, and — more importantly — kept its shape once it was out of my hands.

A system
that scales itself.

Once the guidelines were in the team's hands, the bottleneck moved. Junior designers and the marketing lead could produce on-brand work without me approving every line — which is the real test of whether a system actually works.

Major deliverables, strategy to launch

10wk

Zero to production-ready

2×

Faster output once team was self-serving

05 Logo Guidelines Anatomy · Variants · Usage

08 — Logo Anatomy

Three parts. Each one earns its place. The system flexes by removing pieces — never by adding to them.

Three parts.
One crest.

The Frame

Deco Stepped Shield

An ornamental crest with hand-drawn corner notches and a fan motif at the top. The frame is the bit that does the heaviest lifting — it tells you "this is old, this is considered" before you read a word.

The Wordmark

Limelight + Poiret One

"POKER CLUB" set in Limelight — a true 1920s headline face — with "THE" floated above in Poiret One, an Art Deco geometric. Tracked open so it sits on the page like an engraving.

The Suits

Spade · Heart · Diamond · Club

The four suits, set in a single row at the foot of the crest. It's the only "obvious" poker cue in the mark — every other element earns the genre quietly.

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09 — Colour Variants

Three versions.
Every context covered.

Always use the version with maximum contrast for the surface. Don't invent new colour pairings outside these three — they're not happy accidents waiting to happen.

Primary · Dark Default. Use on black, imperial purple, or bordeaux.

Reversed · Light For ivory, cream, and warm light surfaces only.

Monochrome Print, embossing, foil, embroidery, engraving.

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10 — Clearspace

Give it room
to breathe.

Clearspace is measured in X — the cap height of the wordmark at the size you're using. Nothing — type, image, page edge — should enter the X-zone around the crest.

Horizontal

Minimum 1× the cap height of "POKER" on left and right. Scales proportionally.

Vertical

Minimum 1× above and below the crest, including the suit row. The suits count.

Page edges

The rule applies to format edges. Never bleed the crest to a paper or screen edge.

Other elements

No type, imagery, or secondary marks inside the X-zone, at any size, ever.

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11 — Minimum Size

Legibility
is non-negotiable.

Below the sizes below, the suit row and "THE" become noise. At those sizes, switch to the wordmark-only mark or drop to the standalone monogram — don't squeeze the full crest into a space it can't hold.

160px Digital · Web

100px Mobile · Nav

30mm Print · Min.

16px Favicon

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Below 100px digital or 30mm print, the "THE" and suit row fall apart visually. At those sizes, use the wordmark-only or monogram instead — never force the full crest where it can't hold its detail.

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12 — Background Usage

Contrast is
everything.

The crest always sits on a flat brand surface. Always. Gradients, photography, and unapproved colours pull focus from a mark that's been designed to do the talking on its own.

Approved

✓ Approved Gloss black — primary surface.

✓ Approved Imperial purple — secondary surface.

✓ Approved Ivory — reversed variant only.

Do Not

✗ Do not Never on brand gold — kills contrast.

✗ Do not No gradients. Flat brand surfaces only.

✗ Do not No unapproved off-brand colours.

✗ Do not Never rotate, stretch or skew the crest.

13 — Reflection

What this project
taught me.

The hardest part of this project wasn't the logo. It was getting four stakeholders to agree that going quiet in a loud category is the move, not the risk. Most of weeks one and two was spent making that case — competitor walls, audience interviews, mood boards held up against the spreadsheet. Once that conversation landed, everything downstream got easier.

The other thing I'd flag to anyone running a build like this: coordinate the system, not just the design. Half my job here was creative direction; the other half was making sure copy, dev, and compliance all had the same picture in their heads. A great logo dies fast if the launch banner copy is off-brand or the dev team can't read the colour tokens.

The last thing I keep coming back to — and the one I'd say to any designer running a brand build in 2026 — is to protect the parts of the work AI can't touch. Generative tools are genuinely useful for moodboards and divergent exploration, and I use them. But the decisions that gave this brand its shape didn't come from a prompt. They came from sitting in a room while four stakeholders argued about whether quiet luxury could survive in a category built on noise. From interviewing a 60-year-old tournament regular about why he stopped playing online. From cutting the third version of the suit row because it looked too cute on a poker chip. That argument, that interview, that "no, again" — that's the work. A senior designer's job is to know which parts of the process get faster with automation and which parts genuinely don't — and to defend the second category from any pressure to speed it up.

Ruhan HeSenior Designer · Coordinator

01 — Overview

A brand that earns the chair before it deals the cards.

02 — The Challenge

Four problems.One visual system.

No brand equity to lean on

Two rooms, one front door

Regulated everything

Small team, big output

03 — Strategic Decisions

The calls thatshaped the brand.

04 — Visual Language

The system,built to age well.

Colour System

Typography System

05 — Deliverables

A full system.Seven shipped pieces.

Logo System

Colour System

Type System

Campaign Creative

Social Templates

Banner Series

Brand Bible

Social Templates — Sample

LIVE.NOW.

BIGHAND

Welcome,player.

Brand in Application

01 — Business Card

02 — Letterhead

03 — Member Home

04 — Live Tournament

05 — VIP Membership

06 — Tournament Chip Set

06 — Process

How a brandgets built from nothing.

Strategy

Identity

System Build

Campaign

Guidelines

07 — Outcome

A systemthat scales itself.

08 — Logo Anatomy

Three parts.One crest.

The Frame

The Wordmark

The Suits

09 — Colour Variants

Three versions.Every context covered.

10 — Clearspace

Give it roomto breathe.

Horizontal

Vertical

Page edges

Other elements

11 — Minimum Size

Legibilityis non-negotiable.

12 — Background Usage

Contrast iseverything.

Approved

Do Not

13 — Reflection

What this projecttaught me.

Four problems.
One visual system.

The calls that
shaped the brand.

The system,
built to age well.

A full system.
Seven shipped pieces.

LIVE.
NOW.

BIG
HAND

Welcome,
player.

How a brand
gets built from nothing.

A system
that scales itself.

Three parts.
One crest.

Three versions.
Every context covered.

Give it room
to breathe.

Legibility
is non-negotiable.

Contrast is
everything.

What this project
taught me.