Case 04 of 04 · Saber Interactive · 2026

Giving the (saber) cat its claws

A cold-pitch for the game developer Saber Interactive, bringing its complete digital presence up to date for its current audience.

Saber Interactive refreshed logo key art
ClientSaber Interactive
RoleArt Director · Lead designer
TeamBrand, Web
Timeline~2 weeks
ToolsFigma, Adobe CC
1,000+employee studio
2→1two typefaces consolidated into a single system
72pxa logo that works at minuscule sizes

Problem + Context

A cold pitch. With no hard data, I’ve made some reasonable assumptions. Saber Interactive recently bought its way out of its contract with Embracer Group and has several major successes, but its brand doesn’t reflect that. The outdated website has no retargeting strategy, no clear points to capture interested buyers, and likely almost no conversion. PROS, their system for rewarding players with free in-game cosmetics, is missing entirely. As a cold pitch, I set clear boundaries:

From market research and playing their games, Saber’s core demographic is men 24–40, drawn to shooters (World War Z) and industrial builders (SnowRunner, RoadCraft).

How I built it.

I dug up how the brand had changed over it’s 20+ year lifetime, and hooked into what had always been the heart of the brand, the saber cat. This isn’t about a big shift, it’s refining and defining.

01

Understanding its history.

The Saber Logo has always retained the Saber cat as a key component. It's always appeared to be aggressive, reading emblematic of the company's willingness to take on challenges that others might shy away from. To be focused and determined as they achieve constant growth and their ultimate prize, a company that dominates the game development space. However the most recent iteration post Embracer group sell-off feels static, and the cat itself feels more like it's opening its mouth, not as if we've caught it mid lunge.

Saber Interactive's original 2002 logo — blue saber cat emblem
Saber Interactive's mid-era chrome saber cat logo
Saber Interactive's current post-Embracer logo — white saber cat

The key decision.

Revising, not re-inventing.

My revision keeps the core of the cat from over the years, the triangular eye, wide jaw, the cut behind the ears and jaw that feel assertive and create an impactful silhouette. I've refined what's always been present, creating a contour from head to snout, with an incision for the nose. The jaw was heavily reworked with a shape that flows more smoothly, and teeth that break that flow while reinforcing heavy rightward momentum. The Saber text was originally set in Phonk with a handful of manual adjustments, however I felt that the typeface was a bit too chunky and the negative space was very uneven. It's been reset with Macrosoma Grotesque Loose Bold with a slight obliquing was applied to reinforce the left to right movement. For built small (below) additional adjustments were made to the cat so finer details weren't lost.

New Saber logo
Old Saber logo
The mark built small — legible down to 72px with clear space
02

Rethinking typography.

All Saber materials are set in Bebas Neue Pro, a fairly tall somewhat industrial and bold typeface. This reinforces the games and brand voice indirectly, while having numerous weights that leave ample room for clear hierarchy, and continued exploration of the brand.

Bebas Neue Pro type specimen
Typographic hierarchy across Bebas Neue Pro weights
03

A palette to begin

Saber has and will continue to be an "on dark" company, but now features hints of red in its primary scheme. Internal testing showed that skewing the black to a softer tinted red created a subtle moody atmosphere that echoes their most successful games. It's also a small but very noticeable differentiation when compared to its competitors such as Activision, Undead Labs, and Krafton. The palette overall is simple, predominantly grayscale, using the core Saber Red for high conversion/engagement points like buttons, and carousel sliders. An optional Saber Red 2 is used only for clarifying hover states where Saber Red is used.

Saber palette — primary black, white, red and secondary grays
Color volume — proportional usage across the palette
04

Web presence

The website doesn’t say anything about the brand, and gives a curious player no reason to stay. I rebuilt it from the ground up inside Elementor, which Saber already uses. In October 2026, while I was working on this, Saber relaunched the homepage alongside moving PROS onto saber.games. The relaunch is a step forward, but it’s the PROS layout applied to the whole site: a video hero, a grid of 30+ covers with feature chips on each, and rounded white pills that could belong to any platform. My version keeps Saber’s art and type in every section, and the account is a single Sign in button in the header plus one band on the page. Below: the original, the relaunch, and my redesign, scrolling section by section.

Saber Interactive’s original homepage
05

A kit Saber can build pages with.

The system is built to drop straight into Elementor. Colors and fonts are tokens named after Elementor’s global settings, buttons and cards map to its widgets and loop items, and every section ships at desktop, tablet and mobile on Elementor’s own breakpoints. A marketer can stand up a game page or a news post from prebuilt sections without a designer redrawing anything.

Game, news and reward cards, account navigation, fields and table rows
06

Making free rewards worth the effort.

PROS is Saber’s player account. Players use it to link their games, collect free in-game rewards and Twitch Drops, and copy saves between platforms. On October 7, 2026 it moved off prismray.io and onto saber.games. But claiming one free reward still takes 8 steps in 4 places, and that much effort filters players out instead of pulling them back in. I rebuilt the account inside the new brand so each screen fixes something players have actually reported.

What I’d do next