I am a national organizer of the Humans vs. Zombies game, as well as the Chief Brand Officer and a founding member of Gnarwhal Studios Inc., the company my friends and I started to manage the Humans vs. Zombies game.

As one of the national organizers of the Humans vs. Zombies game, my responsibilities include the design and maintenance of our online community of tens of thousands of players.

Impact and Reception

The International Herald Tribune called Humans vs. Zombies “the antidote for the ailments of a generation.” Data from the game has been used in models for Foreign Policy magazine. Steven Colbert named the game the “number one threat to America.”

We have been invited to competitive gaming festivals such as Come Out and Play, where we won the “Players’ Choice” award and were recognized for our game design and organizational ability.

The game has received positive coverage from:

• NPR
• The Boston Globe
• The Associated Press
• The Washington Post
• USA Today
• The Globe and Mail
• The Chronicle of Higher Education
• SlashDot
• Fox News

The Humans vs. Zombies Brand

Humans vs. Zombies needs a strong brand that captures the sense of community that the game creates, reminds people that it is safe and family-friendly, and pays homage to the gritty zombie genre that attracts new players.

I do all of our print and digital design in-house, which gives us fine-grain control over our branding, and has helped to increase awareness of the game and grow the Humans vs. Zombies community.

Humans vs. Zombies Website

We rapidly outgrew five different versions of our website as the Humans vs. Zombies game exploded in popularity.

 

Our current site is able to scale to meet the demands of a growing community. It has a modular designs so that we can add or remove items as necessary.

The fifth generation of our site uses WordPress with some AJAX fanciness which can scale to the size of our growing community.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes on this site – integration with SMF forums, applications from the Google Maps API, a web store, JavaScript, dynamic content, and user-generated pages and posts.

Humans vs. Zombies Merchandise

As Humans vs. Zombies has grown in popularity, there has been increased demand for merchandise and other HvZ brand extensions.

 

Humans vs. Zombies Print Materials

As we start to take our game on the road, we have to rapidly develop and produce print materials that explain the game and let people join in. Here is an example of a brochure we created for the Come Out and Play festival:

 

Public Relations and Rapid Response

Occasionally, schools will ban or restrict play of Humans vs. Zombies. Part of maintaining the Humans vs. Zombies brand is to challenge these decisions. We work with students and organizers on the ground to overturn these bans or reach a compromise with school administrations.

Sometimes, in order to communicate to uncooperative schools just how important the Humans vs. Zombies game is to its players, we ask our community of hundreds of thousands of players to get involved. To facilitate this, I designed the HvZ Action software, which I built at no cost in-house with our lead developer, Justin Quick.

This software allows us to quickly add phone and email advocacy campaigns with custom talking points and invite players to send a message to the school in question. As players write their messages to schools, the software uses keyword recognition to determine if players have discussed the important talking points. If they haven’t, they are politely reminded to mention all of the relevant issues, and given the option to send their message anyway if they want.

This design enables our community to take instantly satisfying action on behalf of a game they love while staying respectfully on message.

The HvZ Community

Our community of players is quirky, engaged, and fun. They give us important feedback on every decision we make, and are active participants in spreading the game and keeping it legal.

We maintain an active forum for players to discuss everything HvZ related, and make an effort to stay in dialogue with them on a daily basis. Recently, some outstanding forums members have come forward to help us moderate discussions and organize posts.

Based on several years worth of forum posts, we started to assemble a guide for starting a game of HvZ. The guide was written by Adam Longwill and myself, and I designed it:

Giving this much attention to the community of players continues to surprise and reward us. When we began building the new version of the HvZ SOURCE software that helps players organize their games, we needed quick cash to start development. We partnered with Kickstarter, and used their grassroots fundraising software to collect over $2,000 in donations from our players in under a month:

Our networks allowed us to get the word out and explain why we needed the money, but it was our special relationship with our community that led them to support us.

Video

In 2007, I created the “Humans vs. Zombies Documentary” which followed the fourth-ever game, played at Goucher College. The documentary spread virally, and was featured on Comcast OnDemand.

As the Foundation’s New Media Director, I worked directly with Paul Rusesabagina and Sean Tenner, the Foundation’s Executive Director to develop an evocative visual style for the Foundation.

I developed branding for the Foundation based on previous iterations of a logo and style. My goal was to create a memorable visual identity and maintain it with consistent typography and color control across all media.

The Website

The website layout is a bit experimental – I did away with the horizontal and verticle navigation bars of the old site to reduce the amount information appearing on the front page and target our visitors towards registration and donation. I also made the main item on the home page an irregularly-sized video, which catches the eye and provides a personal introduction to the site, giving visitors an immediate connection.

Some of my favorite parts are the smallest details… the favicon, the 404 page, the rollover effect on main navigation.

Film and Video

I filmed these videos with Paul Rusesabagina at Kurth Lampe in Chicago. I helped write the scripts with Mr. Rusesabagina, and edited the video for the website.

Print Materials

I created a separate but consistent look for print materials, simplifying the colors but keeping the large format type and style. These fliers have gotten a very positive response from foundation supporters and international powers alike.

 

(I am introduced by Goucher College President Sandy Ungar).

Designs were printed and used nationally in the field, at events such as these:

“Pro-Family, Pro-Obama” sign at a Michelle Obama event.

…as well as at the Democratic National Convention, where the Palm Beach Post noted:

As [Congressman Robert Wexler] spoke, many in the Florida delegation held up signs saying ‘Pro-Israel. Pro-Obama.’

Faith merchandise was sold on the Barack Obama online store, and was covered by CNN and the Drudge Report:

After the election, I donated some of the merchandise I created to be sold at an auction to benefit the Anti-Defamation League:

To my amusement, there continues to be a market online for merchandise I designed:

Designs

 

Strategy

Many of the lessons I learned while working on the Obama campaign were applicable to the school election.

I branded my campaign with a logo, recognizable colors, and a distinctive typeface that reflected my message. I made bold design choices early on, such as using a logo without my name on it.

I tried to do the most difficult work first… I spelled out my message and printed posters and booklets before other candidates had sent in their letters of intent. This left the majority of my time free to “touch” voters by contacting them online and in person.

 

I was able to define a coherent message for my campaign and reinforce that message with my branding on everything I produced. I was the only candidate to submit a letter of intent on letterhead.

This also forced my opponents to spend campaign time responding to my messaging and issues rather than outlining their own agenda. While I was speaking person-to-person with students, my opponents were scrambling to respond to my posters with their own posters. Posters don’t vote.

Design Challenges

Everything I produced for my campaign had to compete for students’ attention in an environment that is extremely familiar.

I approached this design problem by creating contextual campaign advertisements that stood out because of their relation to their space.

One particularly successful advertisement responded to a new college procedure. Over winter break, transparent folders were attached to the back of every dorm room door, and students were given a booklet of “Campus Emergency Procedures” to place into this folder.

In response, I produced a poster fitted for the envelope. The poster, “Emergency Procedures for a Questionable Search and Seizure,” was popular with students, brought my branding into people’s rooms, and drew attention to my central campaign issue.

 

I also created and handed out hundreds of eight page full-color booklets which I produced for free in the CTLT. These booklets gave students an opportunity to read about my ideas in greater depth and literally share those ideas with their friends by passing around their booklet.

Awards

I was selected as the First Place entry in the 2009 Goucher College Digital Arts Contest for this campaign, and received very positive feedback from the panel of judges from the Baltimore Professional Association for Design:

“Great use of color and type. Easy to read and draws positive, curious attention. Based on your explanation of your campaign, it is obvious you have a clear understanding of your goals and how to achieve them with design. Well done.”

“This is a really outstanding portfolio for a student campaign! I like it because it is fun, verbal, and visually well-integrated. It shows a lot of creativity and imagination, and I would love to see more of the student’s work like this”

“Great Job! Great Placement and Choice of Fonts!”

“this student clearly understands that outstanding design includes strategic thinking AND good typography and composition. Bravo”

“the site provides a portfolio of experience with good design ideas. the site itself is clean and comfortable to work with.”

Gallery

 

In other HvZ-related news, my 2007 documentary on the Humans vs. Zombies game at Goucher College has been picked up by Stupid Videos and made available to all customers of Comcast Cable.

In your “On Demand” window, go down to “Cutting Edge,” then find the “StupidVideos,” and you will see Humans vs. Zombies parts I and II filed under, “Sketch Comedy.”

You can see the full documentary on Vimeo:

Humans vs. Zombies from HvZ Source on Vimeo.

Enjoy… and, oh… as soon as there is an alternative, you should probobly consider dropping Comcast. Their service is awful.

After lots of meetings (and plastering the campus in rally signs), we successfully lobbied to overturn the policy in one week. Click on photos for more information.

 

I created a website, GoucherHousing.com, to give actionable options to students who wished to help. Over 300 students used the site to send e-mails to our administration, and many requested materials like signs and fliers, so that they could help advocate our cause while staying respectfully on-message.

 

The gender-neutral housing pilot program was expanded to two buildings:

It turned out to be tons of fun, so we decided to publish it for free online.

I designed the cards and the website, which you can see at http://www.CardsAgainstHumanity.com – CAUTION: Probably inappropriate for work!

The website uses the jQuery JavaScript library to cycle through the cards.

You can see the work I did for the campaign in my portfolio, and some photos I took along the way below:

UPDATE: You can see the finished documentary at http://www.HVZSource.com