Expanding the Magic Universe Through Art, Nostalgia, and Narrative Worlds
Fire Spirit
My Role
Branding & Visual Direction, Worldbuilding & Interactive Mapping, Marketing Strategy & Launch Planning, Creative & Art Direction Leadership
Overview
Fire Spirit is an indie fantasy series designed to transcend typical genre storytelling. With a deep focus on blending cosmic wonder with grounded realism, I led a multi-disciplinary effort to bring the world of Okeanós to life across branding, worldbuilding, marketing, and creative direction. Our approach wasn't just about making a book; it was about summoning a living, breathing universe that audiences could touch, feel, and believe in.
Branding
To match the series’ vast yet intimate tone, I crafted a visual identity rooted in elegance, mystique, and modern fantasy. Using the "Uranbist" type system, cinematic imagery, and a restrained color paletteFire Spirit Stylescape, I built flexible assets for the website, social media, and promotional materials.
I established visual rules across typography, iconography, product mockups, and advertising campaigns, ensuring brand consistency across digital and print.
Worldbuilding
Rather than relying purely on imagination, I leaned into simulation software to model real-world biomes, topographies, and weather patterns for the primary continent, Azkin (map shown).
Every region was intentionally crafted for realism — influencing the cultures, conflicts, and alliances of the narrative.
Execution
To bring these concepts to life, I created a visual stylescape that captured Secret Lair’s tone as irreverent, mysterious, and premium. This system unified visual references, typography, and layout sensibilities to define a flexible but cohesive art direction. Each concept was supported by detailed speculative design thinking—including packaging ideas like panorama lands that connect into a single vista, survival-kit collector boxes with distressed metal textures, or mirrored foil light-side/dark-side bundles for drops inspired by franchises like Star Wars. The storytelling extended beyond the card frame, imagining campaign hooks such as Spotify mixtapes, QR codes for hidden lore, and even faux PSA trailers voiced by animated characters. The goal was to present each drop not just as a product, but as an immersive, collectible moment in a broader brand universe.
Results
This exploration culminated in the development of more than a dozen fully-formed speculative drops, each grounded in strategic insight and creative possibility. The work offers a vision of Secret Lair as a lifestyle brand—part artifact, part fandom, part narrative canvas. By rethinking how visual storytelling, player identity, and collectible culture intersect, this project reframed Secret Lair not just as a Magic product, but as a long-term creative ecosystem with limitless potential.
3
Drop Types
12
Drop Concepts
10+
Activation Ideas
