“Tamriel Together” Digital Poster

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone…Share Your Journey

Zenimax Online Studios, creators of the popular MMO (online massive multiplayer game) The Elder Scrolls Online or “ESO”, hosted an international poster contest in the winter of 2020 as a part of their “Tamriel Together” campaign. The campaign sought to bring the player base together and highlight the many ways that players support one another and journey together within the game. To this end the poster contest prompted players to design a recruitment poster for their player guild- essentially a club of likeminded players that can range in membership from just a few to 500. This poster design was my entry for my guild.

I wanted the illustration to have a textural, friendly feel to it, to almost feel like a print piece, despite being entirely digital. Meanwhile I also wanted to keep things simple enough that I could meet the contest’s deadline. I also needed the design and its style to feel natural in conjunction with the branding of my guild itself, which I knew I’d be including in the copy section. To those ends I expanded upon my guild’s preexisting jewel toned color scheme and created a variety of additional custom texture brushes within Adobe Illustrator.

As I said, guilds are essentially clubs. Some focus on commerce, others on endgame raids and the pursuit of player perfection. Something that people don’t do much- or do very well in many cases -is cater to the beginner player, returning player, and the mid-tier player. These people need the most help, especially in a game as complicated and vast as ESO, and require gentle hands-on mentors. My guild specializes in serving this demographic and in the design of our poster I wanted to highlight that.

A new player relaxes on the couch holding her controller and headset, chatting with her guild-mates both through voice chat and via the messaging platform Discord, both ways that my guild assists its members. In a fanciful twist of the design, her guild-mates actually appear before her as their characters- a literal representation of the help she’s getting.

Through the gate, themed like the desert culture of “Elsweyr” in the game and reflective of my guild’s brand, the lands of Tamriel stretch under the twin moons “Jone” and “Jode.” In the inclusion of these elements I really wanted convey the concept that by playing the game one is able to escape into this other world and tie the design into the copy, to show the “wide and wonderful world.” There are a few callbacks to the game, including a “skyshard” that seemingly has fallen in the living room.