Case study · product, brand & platform
gamerdeer.com
Gamer Deer, an independent gaming platform imagined, drawn and built from the ground up
Gamer Deer helps players decide what to play, when to buy and where to get the best legitimate price, without relying on grey-market key sellers. I designed its brand, its mascot, the product, the interface, the CMS and the data engines behind it.
- Role
- Founder, art direction, product design, UX/UI, development
- Scope
- Visual identity, mascot, information architecture, design system, frontend, backend, data
- Stack
- Astro, PHP, MySQL, IGDB API, retailer feeds
- Year
- 2026
- Status
- Live
A player about to buy a game juggles reviews, forums, price trackers and stores, with grey-market key resellers waiting at the edges. Gamer Deer brings those steps into one experience: editorial content, curated discovery, community opinion and commerce, built around a simple idea: trust over clicks.
This was never a client brief. It is a product I imagined, named, drew, designed, built and now run under AD Creative Lab.
01 / The idea
Know before you buy
The market has plenty of game databases. What it lacks is a place willing to give an opinion, then show where to buy honestly.
- 01
Discover
Reviews, guides, news and editorial picks to find the next game worth your evenings.
- 02
Decide
The editorial Deer Verdict, the Herd’s own score, IGDB game sheets and price history, side by side.
- 03
Buy right
Prices compared across authorised retailers only, price-drop alerts and a wishlist that does the watching for you.
Grab it.
Wait. This deer has seen it cheaper.
Two verdicts the platform is built to give with confidence.
02 / Brand
A friendly host, not a fierce emblem
Gaming brands often speak in aggressive neon and menacing mascots. Gamer Deer takes the opposite route: a smiling deer in a headset who welcomes rather than intimidates. The forest becomes a metaphor for community, and the community has a name: the Herd.
The forest lexicon
Every section was renamed to speak the brand’s language without ever losing its function.
- The Daily Forest
- News
- The Herd’s Verdict
- Reviews
- Opportunist’s Den
- Sales, bundles and campaigns
- Chief Deer’s Selection
- Hand-picked deals
- Sunset opportunities
- Offers about to end
- Upcoming Deers
- Upcoming sales, with alerts
- On the Horizon
- Release calendar
- Your Den
- Member area
- Deer Picks
- Personal recommendations
The Herd has a face
The community isn’t a follower count: it has its own characters, its own illustration and a place on every page, from the welcome bar to the footer.
The brand’s voice, as shipped
- We got your back! Welcome to the herd.
- Go to your den
- Return to the forest
- Your trail, your loot, your herd.
- Real reviews from true deers. We don’t hold back.
- The herd has spoken.
- Don’t get lost out there!
- Find your next trail
- Join the herd on Discord!
- No, we don’t work for Santa.
- Talk gear, find your squad, and catch the good stuff.
- No deer were harmed in the making of this website.
- Less checking. More playing.
- Wait. This deer has seen it cheaper.
Where gaming platforms default to cold black and neon, Gamer Deer sits by the campfire: near-black browns, cream for text, and three functional colours that punctuate rather than decorate.
03 / Identity
Warm nocturnal
Palette: 12 colours
Hover a colour to expand it, click to copy its hex code.
Typography: Rubik, 5 weights
A single family with softened corners: round enough for the mascot, firm enough for a spec sheet. Emphasis comes from weight, never from a second typeface.
Feature title · ExtraBold 800
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Heading · Bold 700
The Daily Forest
Editorial title · Bold 700
Multiplayer games need to calm down.
Body · Regular 400
From sprawling adventures to unexpected indie gems, we explore the games worth your time.
Label · Bold 700, tracked
Upcoming release
Price · Medium 500
$29.99
The art direction boards
Palette, typography and visual language: three boards that frame every new page.
04 / Art direction
Game art up front, the interface in the wings
Games already come with spectacular art direction. The interface’s job is to frame it, not compete with it: cinematic crops, dark scrims at the foot of the image for legibility, and upright covers that keep their identity.
Cinematic landscapes
The game world is the subject. Wide crops keep the hero, the horizon and the action.
Bottom-weighted legibility
A dark gradient under white headlines; the top of the image stays open and vivid.
Covers for discovery
Upright key art, sourced from IGDB, stays recognisable at a glance.
Every game in the herd
05 / Product
From curiosity to checkout, without the grey market
Every game has its sheet, every deal a reason to exist, every release a date. The journey reads like an investigation: what the game is worth, what it costs, and whether it is better to wait.
The game sheet and the deals page: two doors into the same buying decision.
The engine behind the prices
Game data comes from IGDB; prices and offers from retailer feeds and APIs. Everything is normalised and stored locally, then worked on by in-house engines.
01Sources
- IGDB metadata
- Retailer feeds and APIs
- Publisher and store promotions
- News sources
02Core
- Normalisation
- Local MySQL storage
- Custom PHP CMS
03Engines
- Deal ranking
- Opportunity detection
- Promotion tracking
- News curation
04Experiences
- Game sheets
- Deals
- Release calendar
- Alerts and wishlist
06 / Editorial
Reviews, guides and news with a backbone
Gamer Deer doesn’t just aggregate. It publishes scored reviews, opinion pieces, curated news and interactive modding guides designed as genuine tools.
Interactive modding guides
Category filters, install order, a troubleshooting table, and a typographic cover system: colour states the category, the index states the order, the subtitle states the promise.
07 / Community
Welcome to your den
The member account turns a visit into a habit: a wishlist that watches prices, pinned games, the week’s trends and recommendations built from what you already love.
When a game releases, when its price drops or reaches the price you were waiting for, the platform lets you know.
Less checking. More playing.
08 / Mobile
The whole forest, in your pocket
Every template was designed for mobile from the start: drawer navigation, stacked filters, full-width cards and prices always in view.
Home 
Menu 
Deals 
Game sheet 
Calendar
09 / Under the hood
One person, every hat
Gamer Deer is an entrepreneur’s project as much as a designer’s: brand, product and engineering were shaped together by one person, so every decision serves the other two.
Founder & product strategy
Positioning, business model, roadmap.
Identity & mascot
Name, character, lexicon, tone of voice.
Information architecture
Sections, templates, buying journeys.
UX/UI & design system
27 desktop screens, mobile variants, components.
Astro frontend
Fast static pages, SEO, build-time data.
Custom CMS & backend
PHP and MySQL, in-house editorial tools.
Data pipelines
IGDB import, retailer feeds, ranking and detection engines.
Editorial operations
Reviews, guides, news and curation.
A model that protects the verdict
Gamer Deer is funded through affiliate links and clearly labelled partnerships, with authorised retailers only. The rule is written in black and white on the site’s own disclosure page:
Affiliate relationships do not buy favourable coverage.
The forest is big. The herd has your back.
Gamer Deer shows what art direction becomes when it doesn’t stop at the screen: a name, a character, a vocabulary, a design system, a product and an infrastructure all telling the same story.
It is also proof of a way of working: treating the brand as a product, and the product as a brand.
No deer were harmed in the making of this website.
More projects
Maire info, refonte du quotidien numérique des élus locaux
Editorial design, Art direction, UI/UX design, Web design
Comhit Agency — Visual Identity Design
Brand identity
Design of the visual identity for Comhit Agency, a Paris-based agency specializing in communication solutions for trade shows and professional events. The identity is built around a distinctive symbol integrated into the “O” of the logotype, evoking a star, a compass, a meeting point and connection. Designed to work independently from the Comhit name, the symbol becomes a recognizable visual marker for the brand.
The visual system extends across typography, color palette, graphic compositions, and their print and digital applications. It supports Comhit across its different touchpoints, from exhibition stand signage and sales materials to digital experiences and lead capture journeys.
The overall identity conveys a brand that is human, dynamic and driven by interaction, while establishing a clear and distinctive presence within the B2B and events sector.