ABOUT


LIGHTS OUT

VISUAL & MOTION DESIGN




       /INTRO

Lights Out was a reaction time game built for noon's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix activation. It went live on-app during one of the region's biggest sporting moments of the year - The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The game was simple by design: five lights, one tap, your fastest instinct.
        /WORK

My work spanned the full visual and motion identity of the experience including the initial art direction and gameplay aesthetic, the visual & motion design and interaction language that made the game feel alive. This included the background environments, iconography, badges, reward cards, and the broader asset ecosystem that extended the game across banners, CRM, and in-app surfaces.

The brief was engagement. The craft was in making half a second feel like a race start.








FIRST
PRINCIPLES Part 1 :  Finding the Visual Language to base the UI on.

After initial moodboards and discussions, the work started to establish what does this game feel like? I started working on a set of graphic explorations to pin down the visual energy of the game, answering the question what does speed look like when it's standing still?

Some explorations below.










FIRST
PRINCIPLES (CONTD.)PART 2 : Stripping it back.

The first instinct was reduction. If the game is about one thing this is your reaction, the screen should be about that one thing too. No scenery. No noise. Just five lights and a number.

The direction drew from the physical language of motorsport - dark pit lane aesthetics, the clinical precision of timing hardware and surfaces that feel built rather than designed. The UI was stripped to its functional core including only the light panel, the reaction counter and your personal best. Everything else was a distraction. The contrast was used as the mechanic to minimise distraction.




A near-black environment eliminates visual competition. When everything is dark, the lit lights become the only thing your eye can go to.
In-app banners to support game visibility
The landing page would start with a video whose end frame would serve as the background image for the UI to appear on top of.
Mesh textures on unlit panels, glow bleed on active lights, along with the tactile weight of the TAP button formed physical cues that made the interface feel real.
Title treatment explorations
Worked on two sets of UI components including score displays, rank badges, leaderboard states. Each component explored with the same visual logic, keeping F1 visual language as a starting point.





RAISING THE
STAKESStakeholder feedback pushed the experience toward a fuller F1 world, one with track, car, atmosphere, and the visual weight of race day. As the brief evolved, the visual challenge shifted from restraint to integration. How do you place a functional game UI on top of a rich, immersive environment without one undermining the other? The work became about depth management, to ensure the background receded enough to keep the game readable, while still delivering the spectacle the brief was asking for.

Backgrounds, track environments, and cockpit assets were developed to carry the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix atmosphere into a mobile screen.

Credit : Abhishek Gupta for the overall UI design.






THE WIDER
WORLD Beyond the gameplay screen, the visual world extended across banners, CRM communications, in-app cards, badges, and promotional assets and more. All of these assets needed to speak the same visual language while serving different contexts and user moments.

The Lights Out identity held across every size ranging from a small notification tile to a full-screen takeover, without losing its energy. Whether a user saw the game first or a push notification first, the identity had to be instantly recognisable.

       Some of the assets I designed which helped increase the game’s visibility across the app and other avenues.




SHIPPED.
RACE DAY.Lights Out ran live on the noon app for two weeks across the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix window, 6 to 22 December 2024.

5.9 million games played across 266,000 players. At 22 games per player on average, the mechanic held.













That’s all folks!