CASE STUDY · THE WARP GATE · COLUMBUS, OHIO

A CARD
SHOP BUILT
FOR EVERYONE

When The Warp Gate moved into a space three times its size, it needed a brand big enough to fill it. I built a wordmark you can read from the road, a mural that anchors the gaming floor, a cast of characters for playmats, tokens, and merch, and a convention booth that keeps growing.

Project Snapshot

7+ CONS IN 2026

Star City Games, ComicCon, MagicCon and More.

Client: The Warp Gate
Location: Columbus, OH
Years: 2024 - Current
Role: Illustrator, Muralist, & Designer
Services: Brand Refresh · Mural · Merch & Collectibles · Convention Booth

THE STOREFRONT:
BEFORE & AFTER

Steve Parello started The Warp Gate in his basement in 2020 and moved into a Westerville strip mall that November. By 2024, the community had outgrown the space, and the move to Columbus was the moment to give the shop a brand that matched it.

BEFORE · WESTERVILLE, OHIO

The Warp Gate's original storefront in a Columbus strip mall, with a printed vinyl banner sign in green fantasy lettering on a purple space background.

AFTER · KENNY CENTRE, COLUMBUS

WHAT WE MADE

A WORDMARK YOU CAN SEE FROM THE ROAD

The Warp Gate’s original logo was trying to do too much. It was overly complex, buried under image effects, hard to read, and never set up to scale or print. The move into a shopping center off Kenny Road raised the stakes. The new sign had one job: get noticed by people driving past who’d never heard of the shop.

I hand-drew a new wordmark in teal, green, and hot pink, bold enough to read from a moving car and loud enough to stand out from the stores around it. It’s clean and flat, so it holds up just as well on the sign out front as it does on a sticker or a game token. After dark, the lit-up mural inside shows through the front windows, so the whole storefront glows from the parking lot.

The Warp Gate's teal, green, and pink storefront sign, with the mural glowing through the front windows in Columbus, Ohio

THE WALL THAT
STARTED A WORLD

The new space was three times bigger than the old one, and a room that size can feel empty fast. So I gave it a centerpiece: an 8 by 40 foot mural stretched across the back wall, right above the gaming room floor.

Over about two weeks, I painted the mural introducing The Warp Gate’s world in the same neon green, hot pink, and teal as the new wordmark. It ties the room to the sign outside, and everything that came next grew out of this wall.

Neon green, pink, and teal Warp Gate mural with a dragon above a packed gaming floor at The Warp Gate in Columbus, Ohio

The full 8 by 40 foot Warp Gate mural across the back wall of the gaming room at Kenny Centre in Columbus

BUILDING OUT

THE UNIVERSE

The Warp Gate's merch wall of illustrated character tees and hoodies inside the Columbus card shop

The dragon and the demon didn't stay on the wall. Along with a goddess and a cosmic deity, they became a cast of four, one for each seat in a Commander pod, the standard four-player game. Each character is drawn in its own style, so players with very different tastes can each find the one that feels like theirs, while all four clearly belong to the same world. That was the heart of the rebrand: a shop where everyone feels like they belong at the table.

The cast now lives on playmats, game tokens, stickers, standees, tees, and hoodies. Each playmat tells its own character's story, and Steve has been building out the names and backstory of The Warp Gate's fantasy world around them.

Animated loop of The Warp Gate playmats, each featuring one of the shop's four characters

The Warp Gate sticker collection, featuring the shop's characters, spread across a wooden table

Maroon Warp Gate hoodie with the demon rider character design

Embroidered Warp Gate hats and beanie in black, olive, and orange

A BOOTH BUILT

TO GROW

The Warp Gate's first convention setup was two six-foot tables. Instead of designing one booth and starting over each time they grew, I built it as a kit: banners, large-format panels, and signage that add on piece by piece.

Each year the kit got bigger, until it became a full 360-degree island on the show floor. This year it traveled to seven Star City Games conventions, and it still looks like the same shop people visit in Columbus.