Lenovo explain what happened with Legion
- 12 September, 2019 11:11
When Lenovo’s Legion gaming sub-brand first launched, the range didn’t exactly stray too far from the conventions around what you'd expect a gaming laptop to look like. If you hear the words gaming laptop and think obnoxious red LEDs, you've got the right idea.
These days, Lenovo’s Legion range plays things a bit differently. The specific niche that Legion targets hasn’t changed but the tone around it has become much less aggressive than what it was only a year or two ago.
Both the design and branding around Legion have mellowed out and, more noticeably, the entire aesthetic of the gaming-focused subbrand has shifted colors from bright reds to a cooler blue.
We asked Brian Leonard, Lenovo’s Vice President of Design, why.
He told us that “when you do when you do a brand change, you do a design change."
According to him, “my mission was that I [wanted] to go to redesign the product line so that they're in alignment with the new name, and what they do strategy-wise. So that's where that's where it came from.”
“The story, really, with Legion is all about this kind of balance of work and play."
"Through all of our research, what we learned was that not every gamer in the world wants to walk out into the world to coffee shops and be perceived as a gamer.”
“They want to be able to turn that on and off a little bit. So we dialed down the 12-year old gaming aesthetic back so that feels a little more sophisticated versus the black and the red and looking like you're trying to look like you’ve been born from a Lamborghini.”
Disclosure - PC World Australia's coverage of this year's IFA in Berlin was sponsored by Lenovo who covered the costs of our flights and accommodation.