Moth

Discord: Rebrand

Throughout 2024, we worked closely with Discord’s creative team to revamp the brand’s core characters, sub-characters, and iconography, informing their refreshed brand guidelines.

  • Creative Direction

    Daniel Chester
    David Prosser

  • Producer

    Ifor Ashton

  • Design

    Luke Doyle
    David Prosser
    Daniel Chester
    Francois Bourdin
    Pierre De Menezes
    Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits
    Bianca Beneduci Assad
    Joe Dennis

  • 3D

    Luke Doyle
    David Prosser
    Ricard Badia
    Stephanie Dewhirst
    Luke Doyle
    Jessica Elyce Herrera
    Paul McMahon
    Emmanuel Morales
    Cecilia Puglesi
    Laura Sirvent Collado


Work began in late 2023, when we were brought in to assess and propose ways to “age up” the brand. Early references leaned heavily into Arcane and Into the Spider-Verse, suggesting they wanted to move away from the younger, more playful characters, towards something more human.

The Brief

While Discord’s core user base has always been gamers, its audience has expanded significantly since launch. Representing this broader range of communities was key to demonstrating the platform's diversity of interests. We needed to create characters that users could see themselves in.

Discord was keen to retain its core mascot characters, Wumpus (purple critter), Nelly (hamster), and Clyde (robot), due to their strong brand recognition, but wanted to explore how these characters could also evolve and mature.

Our response was to present a “multiverse” of styles. Different rendering styles and techniques are used to represent different groups. We landed on an approach that can be rendered in 2D, 3D, or Low-Poly with characters that can sit alongside each other harmoniously.

3D

Bringing Wumpus into a textured 3D space immediately raised questions around proportion and personality. We adjusted their silhouette, nudging them slightly closer to humanoid proportions and trimmed some weight from their belly.

This redistribution helped balance their form and opened the door to accessorisation. Enter bucket hats, beanies and bumbags!  After kitting Wumpus out with a whole new wardrobe, we ultimately landed on a simple Discord-branded white puffer jacket. Choice.

We extended this approach to Clyde and Nelly, adding surface details such as scratches and custom-made stickers to give them a modern feel with subtle retro nostalgia. A closer look at Clyde’s head even reveals an NES controller port at the rear.

2D

Alongside the main cast, we developed a range of sub-characters to better represent the various groups on Discord. Early concepts leaned toward humanoid proportions but weren’t strictly confined to them, particularly during ideation (see frog-bot and spicy demon man).


As the system evolved, we narrowed the scope to human characters, focusing on pose and clothing as key tools for expressing identity and interests.

Naturally, the core characters also needed to translate seamlessly into this 2D rendering style.


Homepage

What began as a side quest at Moth eventually became a central focus toward the end of the project. While developing the character system, we were also shaping the Discord homepage, which would serve as the stage for introducing the multiverse concept. It needed to succeed here before expanding across the wider platform.

We explored several presentation routes, one of the most promising being to use Discord as a physical “hangout” space. This allowed robots, dog walkers, and basketball stars to coexist in a single environment.

Through multiple iterations, we pushed and pulled the space across different dimensions, adjusting levels of detail until we eventually stripped it back into a more abstract, void-like setting.

To populate this space, we developed a set of 3D icons, some rooted in gaming culture, others more broadly recognisable. Several were designed as Easter eggs: nerdy nods to Discord’s core audience, ensuring they still felt seen.

In total, we created 26 unique icons. Highlights include the cardboard box from Metal Gear Solid, the frying pan from PUBG, and the turnip from Animal Crossing.

Displaying the Discord UI was essential, so we designed a retro-futuristic screen complete with knobs, dials, stickers, and, of course, the Street Fighter II Turbo Hadouken code on a Post-it note. IYKYK.

From there, the work was taken over by design agency Porto Rocha, which developed a broader design system integrating type, colour, and logo for OOH and online campaigns. Our character guidelines have since been used by Discord’s internal team, Rocket Panda, and Justin Lemmon to roll out new productions.

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