A visual language for strength, movement, and community.

Shogun MMA · 2019CampaignIdentityEvent designA date in the diary?

Four weeks to sell out a venue means everything you put out has to read as one thing, not seven.

Context

A complete identity and launch campaign for Shogun MMA 3, built around a world championship main event, Gustafsson vs Lomas, at Spennymoor Leisure Centre in the North East.

Challenge

Four weeks to sell out a venue and grow an online audience from a standing start, across print, social and pitch collateral, all needing to read as one brand rather than several separate jobs.

Approach

A samurai mask mark bold enough to hold up at poster scale, then carried consistently through fight cards, campaign concepts, tickets and a daily drip of social content counting down to fight night.

Brand identity

A samurai mask reduced to its simplest form: a helmet, an eye, a snarl. Bold enough to read at a glance from across a car park, distinctive enough to survive being punched, stamped, and animated a hundred different ways.

Campaign concepts

Roadside and bus-stop renders built for social and for pitching the event to sponsors, not a purchased ad buy. Same gold-on-black system, staged wherever it would land if it had been.

Shogun MMA 003 roadside billboard concept render, Gustafsson vs Lomas world championship

Shogun MMA 003 bus stop poster concept render

Shogun MMA 003 fight card, pro and amateur bouts

Fight night collateral

Every pro and amateur bout on the card, laid out so a full night of fights stayed legible on one sheet. The same gold-on-black system that ran through every other touchpoint, shrunk down to programme scale without losing any of its weight.

Shogun MMA fighter portrait, championship belt

Tickets

Three tiers, priced and colour-coded so a buyer could choose in seconds: Gold at £40, Red at £30, Black at £20. Same system, same weight as everything else, just small enough to fit in a pocket.

Shogun MMA 003 event ticket, Gold, Red and Black tiers

Social media

A fan-prediction post for every bout on the card, fifteen match-ups run as a daily countdown across the four weeks. Sponsors and partners got their own spotlight posts, past footage and giveaways kept the feed moving between fight news, and daily stories pushed for the in-the-moment conversation a static post can't get.

Gustafsson vs Lomas fan prediction, 74% to 26%

Blair vs Oshea fan prediction, 30% to 70%

Close vs Patterson fan prediction, 89% to 11%

Devreught vs Bodnar fan prediction, 97% to 3%

Ellison vs Stronge fan prediction, 13% to 87%

Hauxwell vs Shuttleton fan prediction, 100% to 0%

Loucaides vs Gilbert fan prediction, 10% to 90%

Mukisa vs Power fan prediction, 91% to 9%

McWilliams vs Simpson fan prediction, 42% to 58%

Roldan vs Tholel fan prediction, 78% to 22%

Minns vs Campbell fan prediction, 70% to 30%

Smith vs Zlatev fan prediction, 55% to 45%

Zadeh vs Bonallie fan prediction, 27% to 73%

Stephenson vs Scott fan prediction, 90% to 10%

Wilson vs Birbal fan prediction, 61% to 39%

"Luke brings honesty to creativity, guiding with clarity, challenging with care, and delivering work that always feels considered. He listens deeply, speaks truthfully, and designs with intention."

Jeff Metcalfe, Co-Owner, Shogun MMA

The four-week campaign sold out the venue and grew Shogun's online community by more than 57%.

For you

A date in the diary and a lot to make before it?

Deadline work fails when each piece gets designed on its own and nothing ends up looking related. One system, decided early, is what makes a four-week turnaround possible at all.

I work well against a fixed date. If your timeline is longer, we should do the strategy properly first rather than rushing to make things.

Tell me what you are building