Counter-Strike has already been around for 20 years. It is incredible how much Counter-Strike has grown and especially in the last 6 years since the release of Counter-Strike Global Offensive a lot has happened. eSports, massive growth, expanding on the Chinese market, solid updates, and much much more. With this pattern I hope to summarize a teeny bit of this vast history in a pleasing visual design to commemorate everything Counter-Strike has been through. Do you know all the references?


The work process of this pattern was quite interesting to say the least. Reason for this is because I am not designing in my usual environment due to an exchange period in South Korea. All I had was my laptop and my tablet to hopefully deliver a good looking end result. Initially I started out with creating pieces of paper in Substance designer. I like working in a modular environment because it allows me to easily change something at the start as long as I keep a neat organisation. Well, the latter was not really achieved as one can see by my end-graph. Hey, at least I understand it right?



Anyways, getting back into designing something game related after I have been mainly focused on my undergraduate UX Design was kinda difficult. I haven't used substance designer in at least a year so I was rusty to say the least. After a while I started picking up where I left and managed to find my little workflow. After a while I was left with enough paper to start out on the bombsite execute sketches I initially planned. I had a list of memorable moments from cs:s, 1.6 and GO, but after making 2 sketches of GO eSports moments I decided it was not going to work out.

I was going to give up. Went out to get some groceries and when I got back decided to come up with a creative solution so I could still publish something to commemorate Counter-Strike's 20th birthday. Then it hit me; I could make something with newspaper articles and include my drawings in those as figures! I opened up Adobe Xd and quickly found my way into writing and designing fake newspaper articles for various events.

After all the newspaper articles were made it was time to do the layout. To say the least I was really nervous to see how it would turn out and when I imported it in-game I was really really happy with the end result. I played around with colours and ended up on a simple beige-grey combination. I would've liked to use colour combinations but in a previous project with Ezikyl a fitting dark-red was already used.

So then came the part of taking images and post processing and I had to start from scratch because I had nothing on my laptop. Not having access to my previous work was frustrating to say the least but I think I did a decent job in portraying the pattern nicely. I am happy with the end result and hope it commemorates Counter-Strike's 20th Birthday in a pleasing visual composition.

Can you name all the events that are featured in the newspaper articles? :)


Nothing special, just standard wear that comes with Anodized Multicoloured and Hydrographic finishes.


I am happy with the end result and do believe it commemorates the anniversary well. I would have loved to include more events from the past but sadly enough the pattern became to crowded and busy to look at. Nevertheless I hope you enjoy this skin and appreciate the time and effort that went into it. Happy Birthday again, and here is to many more years of Counter-Strike!

Hollandje