Overview
Amy and I have been working together since 2021… and what started as a logo project turned into something much bigger. These days I’m part of her team, as CERCo.’s designer.
CERCo. is the anti-boring cyber training company. Physical escape room games sent to companies in backpacks and boxes, large scale installations people can walk inside of, online experiences, vishing training… all designed to build a real security culture rather than make people sit through another PowerPoint. No one needs more mind-numbing PowerPoints in their life.
As the business has grown, so has my role. I handle everything visual, the brand identity across CERCo. and all its sub-divisions, game manuals, marketing assets, certificates, studio photography and templates the team can use themselves.
Amy knows the brand is in safe hands. I know the business well enough that she rarely has to explain twice.
Together we’ve accomplished:
- One consistent look across The Cyber Escape Room Co. and every sub-brand
- A manual for each ESC game
- Studio photography of every game
- Editable templates in InDesign, Canva and Claude Code, so the team can self-serve
- A 137 page white paper soft cover book available for purchase
- Direct mail made with a lot love to cut through the digital overwhelm
- Day to day design and ideation requirements
- Using AI with intentional approach to create posters that can be customised by the customers (date, location etc) and create web apps for the various escape rooms so they appear realistic to the players.
What role do I play in this project? I’m the sole designer and work directly with Amy, who likes to get stuck into the creative side too.
Building a visual system from one key
We started with a simple idea, the ESC key from a keyboard. That shape became the foundation for everything: button shapes, image masks, division logos.
As the business grew, ESC became a division in its own right and CERCo. stepped up as the parent brand, each sub-division with its own slightly different look but unmistakably the same family.
Escape room Manuals
I redesigned each of the ESC manuals from scratch to bring them together with a consistent look, using plenty of white space so the reader can skim through easily. Photography of the escape rooms played a big part in these (more on this down the page).
They’re mostly used digitally, but I set them up print-ready too (with a few small tweaks), because paper means no zooming in on a screen and your phone can stay in your pocket. Here’s a few pages from Elementary’s manual. Every manual follows the same structure so returning players already know their way around, and new ones don’t get lost.
A consistent look.
I’ve since brought plenty of other documents in line with this look, from proposals and quotes to marketing material and the games themselves, plus the certificates you’ll see below. Here’s an editorial article for CTRL+VISH.
proof you survived!
Once an ESC scenario is complete, players get a certificate. We wanted a certificate people would be proud to stick on their wall, but still unmistakably CERCo.
These experiences are made for groups of employees, so plenty of people finish at once… Amy linked it up to her automation so the certs autofill and send themselves. Fancy!
Livia was recommended when searching for a graphic designer to help design our brand, and well… I can see why she gets recommendations left right and centre. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the process having not working with a graphic designer before but Livia was absolutely fantastic. She took the time to get to know us as a business and really delved into our industry to come up with creative and innovative concepts for our logo.
She communicated fantastically, met every deadline and put up with us to-ing and fro-ing on ideas to make sure we had the design we love. I couldn’t recommend her more. She was just a delight to work with. THANK YOU Livia for helping at this critical stage in our business journey, being super lovely to work with and coming up with some amazing ideas! We’ll definitely be back when we need more design services in the future!
— Amy Stokes-Waters, Founder of The Cyber Escape Room Co.
Going upscale with SPACE_
SPACE_ has a slightly more upscale look, using a dark plum. Amy wanted blueprint-style imagery, because these are big scenarios people walk inside and work through. Literally: phone booths, a SOC room, a train…
creative assets
These experiences need dressing as well as advertising… so I created assets for both. Used within the phone booths themselves (see the added graffiti on the gig poster) and provided to clients to promote the experience to their own staff.
Everything’s been built so client logos and dates can be dropped straight in. Because the alternative is comic sans posters around the office and we don’t stand for that. 😬
Video teasers and explainers
I’ve begun making videos of under a minute for social, as a very quick introduction to some of CERCo.’s sub-brands.
This one is for CMD/, the cyber tabletop exercises for real-world incident response. No slide deck, no boring conversation. Team members take on different roles while injects fire at different times… CMD is a live crisis.
go big or go home! cyber awareness month
With everyone’s inboxes bursting, I suggested we take things offline: something tangible that sits on a desk and keeps CERCo. front of mind. A few ideas went around and we landed on a calendar.
It started as 12 months, but then… it’d sit there collecting dust and be forgotten about until 2027. So it became a 16 month calendar, with every month a ready-planned security behaviour programme, so the hard work is already done for them.
The print choices weren’t made on the fly either. 170gsm paper so nothing shows through and it feels quality in your hands, and a 350gsm cover with soft touch lamination (non-negotiable!).
I even made a mini version to check the page flow. I often do, it helps my brain work things out.
Then the packaging. A quality flyer with a personal touch, a foil sticker for laptops (Gen Z inspired 🫰), and a box instead of an envelope, because the calendar is so springy. Finished with a wax seal, a nod to one of the OG tamper-proof security measures. Who isn’t going to go straight for the wax sealed box in their pile of mail? Voilà!
May I have your attention, please?
Amy wrote a white paper that grew into a 137 page book. She’d done the hard part, the words and the data, so my job was making it a joy to read through.
Her first draft was A4 and full of great data that was crying out to be seen. I took it down to A5 to cut printing costs, then reworked the layout. Chapter title pages and intros, data turned into visuals, pull quotes, and an InDesign setup for the typography and structure so everything holds together from cover to cover. Inside it’s not a traditional book, it does side more with a white paper feel.
The cover is a sturdy 350gsm with soft touch lamination, plus spot UV gloss over Amy and the title on the front and back. Each copy gets an on-brand yellow belly band and ships with fun foil stickers – very collectable! You can buy a hard copy or download the PDF right here.
Sorting the photography while I was at it
Before I started this role I knew that having studio photography of the physical cyber escape rooms for ESC would be hugely beneficial for my ideas going forward.
I’m not a photographer, but I knew good studio shots of the physical games would help every design that followed. So with two studio lights, a tripod, some backdrops, a Nikon and a flashgun, I got stuck in and it was a great excuse to get properly familiar with the games. I shot each one in full, plus the individual items. Those photos now turn up throughout the manuals, so people can see exactly what they’re looking at, and in the marketing material, to show what teams actually get. Plus plenty of other places too. Here are a few snippets.
