Project Role: Concept Designer, Narrative Writer, and Copywriter
ASUS Computer’s Republic of Gamers is one of the world’s most serious gaming hardware manufacturers. ACRONYM® is one of the fashion industry’s most respected streetwear brands. The two companies wanted to collaborate, and it was our job to design a radically new approach to the genre.
ACRONYM® wanted to create a laptop that interrupted the typical user experience and forced its user to be more conscious of the hardware. Externally, the Zephyrus G14 RMT01 was highly modified: every aspect of the aesthetic design retooled, including the machine’s materials, finishes, engravings, and even the keyboard paint colors. The machine itself was designed to put the user in the mindset of a kind of secret agent.
I worked on the project with ACRONYM® co-founder Errolson Hugh, renowned designer David Rudnick, Race Service CCO Rod Chong, comic book artist Stephen Platt, and many others to create a narrative framework for the design and user experience.
The story doesn’t end with the laptop’s design.
The mission of the RMT01 project was to push users to be more aware of their own creative potential, and to be more mindful in a world where we all increasingly abandon conscious choice to automation and convenience. To communicate this philosophy, we created a content campaign accessed only through the laptop, adding layers of narrative to the user experience over a yearlong period.
Before the laptop’s official release, this content experience was teased with a series of unbranded videos containing clues to an ARG that ultimately pointed the audience toward a pre-launch giveaway.
These pre-release teaser videos led to an interactive website, Craigslist links, interactive text messaging, and then a real-world experience for the chosen winners.
To mark the official product launch, we ran another giveaway through an ARG experienced kicked-off on ACRONYM-founder Errolson Hugh’s Instagram Live.
The laptop owner’s narrative experience is expanded with ARG campaigns and regular content drops developed in collaboration with artists, designers, musicians, and thinkers. Bespoke art pieces add to the growing narrative of good versus evil. The story unfolds on RMT01 laptops, with primary content populating a website.
Click the image to visit skyanycolour.com