Reports on the the Serbian gaming industry win American design award

SGA: What kind of award is it and who awards it? What exactly was evaluated?

Jelena: The award is hard, it comes from the American Society for Design. The competition was in digital design, and we won in two categories: one for a digital report and the other for infographics. The innovation in design is what was assessed, although I have the impression that it is a cross-section of the state of recent projects, because a large number of people apply. This year, there were about 3,000 applications in a dozen categories. The American Society for Design supports the winners by publishing about them later in their magazine, on their website, they get a badge and they even send an email to the winner’s clients to notify them.

SGA: Is this important to you, and if so, why?

Jelena: Yes, of course! Given that both Jovan and I live, work and try to stay in America, we are in a society where most of our references are completely unknown to people, so it makes sense for us to adorn ourselves with something that is recognized and known in this value system. Also, visibility can’t hurt.

SGA: What was your process of working on SGA reports like?

Jelena: We eased through it. Jovan, what do you think? We somehow quickly agreed on the art direction and followed each other’s designs nicely. Without overthinking, we knew what we were doing from the start.

Jovan: The theme itself is great, allowing for a variety of visual experiments. In each report, we looked to use a new tool or approach to refresh both our process and the aesthetic itself. For example, for ‘22 we did most of the graphics using MidJourney AI, and for ‘23 we used womp.com, a 3D program which runs through the browser. ’21 was some kind of a joke with archival photos from, like, the 20s, I don’t know how we connected it to gaming, but it works 😆

SGA: The gaming industry is specific, but the reports are certainly full of statistics, which in themselves are probably not inspiring. How did you reconcile the world of numbers and video games?

Jovan: Well, video games are numbers in their essence 🙂You just throw some cool graphics on top and the whole thing becomes super nice. I think the same logic worked on the report.

SGA: Design for gaming, however, can often be stereotypical, as can design for this type of publication in general. How did you avoid the beaten path and blaze your own trail?

Jelena: Ha, well, we didn’t follow any paths. We deliberately took a different approach. Jovan’s idea was, as he already mentioned, to pull something new out of our sleeves for each report. So we played around with different tools, which we wanted to try out ourselves. It made sense, the gaming theme required us to be fresh, but also to think about the software we were using. And, secondly, we were given freedom in art direction by the SGA team, and without that, nothing would have happened!

SGA: Graphic design has seemed to be becoming more and more stereotyped in recent years. How difficult is it to be innovative in a field where standards are increasingly defined and breaking the mold is seen as a “mistake” in design?

Jelena: Yes, I like the comment on design errors. I get feedback from clients that I have made a mistake all the time, because, for God’s sake, the illustration is not in the center, and I moved some things, put one on top of the other. My argument, “but I did it on purpose, for this and that,” does not satisfy them. So I carefully choose what I offer to whom and try to understand how far someone can go.

That’s why we must not let go of projects like SGA reports, which give us space to try something new, learn, push some boundaries. We will wither away centering every point.

SGA: Do you play video games? And if so, what’s your poison? 😅

Jelena: I mustn’t say, you will cut me out 😁I don’t play games and never have. That’s why I really enjoyed doing this report.

Jovan: I love them! I used to play a lot of competitive games, like MOBAs, RTSs, FPSs. Now I need a meadow, so I prefer a turn-based games like Civ, Slay the Spire. I’ve recently finished Old World, it’s not bad. And, yes, depending on the season, I can get together with my friends online for some autism, like WoW classic or Project Zomboid, Minecraft, etc. Since I’ve been living outside of Belgrade, I think I’ve managed to maintain the most spontaneous relationship with the people I sometimes get otgether with online to play something. The focus of the conversation is more on the game and the connection than on the hell of existence, I appreciate that.

SGA: And finally, we would like to hear how you ended up in graphic design.

Jelena: I always wanted to do graphic design. It was either that or nothing. I don’t know where it came from. Now I see other nice options, but I’ve simply gone the furthest in design.

Jovan: Well, I actually got into design because of video games. When I was a kid, I enrolled in the School of Design with the idea that I would draw orcs for Blizzard when I grew up. And then I got bored with orcs at one point.

SGA: Thank you very much for helping to make reports on the Serbian gaming industry stand out as Balatro among other games!