Honoring heritage with our SteelSeries headset
GN News
Sep 05, 2024
In February, SteelSeries launched the Arctis Nova 7 Dragon headset. A headset designed by a collective of SteelSeries designers and product managers with Chinese and Taiwanese heritage. The Arctis Nova 7 Dragon edition honors their heritage and culture, the traditions of family gatherings and festivals, and celebrates the beginning of the 2024 Lunar New Year.
Get a glimpse behind the scenes from the people behind the special edition headset from the people behind it.
Angela Ho, Graphic Designer
The biggest challenge, as it always is with a lot of product launches, is that we are trying to do something great with a very limited timeline. We are very passionate about this product because several of us celebrate Lunar New Year. Such passion can also be a challenge because there is simply so much that inspires us and that we like to achieve. It was a lot of crossing out elements and items to make sure we got the essence of the Lunar New Year and did not lose focus.
If we said we knew this was going to be a success, we would be lying. There were a lot of uncertainties regarding the decisions we made, the directions we picked, and the results we got. This project also grew tremendously in scale halfway through the production because our regional sales teams fell in love with the product design, and they wanted to make bets on it. When we were left with no time to overthink, the results were unexpected in the best way possible. The making of the dragon edition got people excited about potential new and fresh ways of doing product launches. I think that's the best outcome for me as an Asian creative in a Western company. SteelSeries is using its name to celebrate part of my culture, and the making of it inspires all my colleagues in different departments.
Andy Gao, Designer
We wanted to incorporate details around the headset that drew inspiration from motifs in Lunar New Year celebrations. The character 福 (Fú, meaning ‘fortune’ or ‘good luck’) is a common character found during Lunar New Year celebrations which we thought would be a nice easter egg to incorporate on the earcup under the removable ear plates — we could all use a little luck to get that next win.
The body is wrapped around the Chinese character for ‘dragon’ and sits atop a stack of lucky clouds (祥云xiángyún), a stylized decorative pattern of clouds commonly found in Chinese art, architecture, textiles, etc.
The design choices were driven by a collaborative effort involving a handful of people who wanted to bring in details that honored the celebrations and culture of the Lunar New Year.
Lucy Lei, Product Manager
SteelSeries has crafted tons of different kinds of Limited Editions over the years, but we haven't really done any limited edition for a specific holiday of any culture. Even though creating something for the Lunar New Year is always on our minds, it hasn't come true until the Year of the Dragon. This is the perfect year for us to enter the Limited Edition Lunar New Year series, with dragon representing power and authority, good luck that all resonate with the SteelSeries brand and products.
For the product side, the biggest challenge is how we can have a product that represents the culture, but on the other hand, can be accepted by global audiences. So, when I was brainstorming the product design with my colleagues Andy and Angie, we wanted it to be a modern design. That's why you can see those "Fu" symbols in a design language instead of just the character. We were happy with the result as it turns out: clean and elegant, but with amazing illustration, and small details like the "fu" symbol and dragon scale.
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