Girraphic rebrands Tencent’s coverage of the NBA using Vizrt tools

For Tencent’s (腾讯控股有限公司) 2017/2018 NBA season coverage, the veteran design team at Girraphic took the established brand from last years coverage to the next level in every way possible.

Maintaining the prestigious black and gold core brand the designers endeavoured to reinvent the look with a sharp, elegant, geometric, edge worthy of Tencent’s identity. Classy, edgy, powerful & prestigious.

A team of three veteran art directors with a combined 50 years of CG and 3D experience led the development of all offline CG renders and set design elements, including led screens, video walls and ribbon boards.

Coupled with a equally talented team of real-time Vizrt designers from the USA, Australia, and South America, the Girraphic team also developed all info and data driven graphic templates. 

Touchscreen, social screens, video wall stat tickers, augmented reality game analysis and social statistical virtual templates were all undertaken.

The online data driven graphics package and custom control application from the previous season were given a refresh to bring them in line with the new design. NBA Stats data coupled with Vizrt’s industry leading real-time applications form the foundation of the graphics operation developed by the Real-time team at Girraphic and the data development team at Tencent.

A key part of the project was the integration of the new design elements into the set design delivered by ClickSpring. The combination of cutting edge physical design concepts and equally crafted visual content for the set screens, ribbon boards and AR tied the project together perfectly. Tencent’s production and design team was a huge part of the vision and direction of the projects efforts.

The team at Girraphic enjoyed conquering the challenges and navigating the process with their amazing staff of individual personalities.

The communication, operational and cultural differences between the Chinese production team and western design teams is always a fun challenge to tackle. The approach of both sides embracing honesty, humour, respect, fatigue and the pursuit of understanding was instrumental.

Culture may differentiate Girraphic’s design team and Tencent’s staff but we have found a way to communicate effectively, work together in pursuit of excellence and more important develop a friendship and partnership over the last 2 years of our design endeavours.

“Girraphic is proud to be apart of this project and grateful to have Tencent’s trust in our design experience, real-time Vizrt specialty skill set and  technical experience. We thank Tencent and ClickSpring for their cooperation and partnership and we look forward the the next opportunity to work with both of these awesome teams!” Nate Marsh, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Girraphic.