First of all, welcome to my brand new blog! Though I’ve had this website for a little while (as this has been primarily my portfolio and also a place for my podcast and creations to live).
I plan on using this blog to post updates on various projects that I’m working on. I’d also like to write about the process of creating visual novels, along with certain aspects of game design and development. If that’s your thing, I hope you find these posts helpful and enjoyable!
So, moving right along – I thought it would be fun to start out with a post on logo design. Creating a logo for your game can be a lot of fun! I’ve had a hand in creating logos for quite a few games – you can take a gander at some of the logos I’ve made below:
A memorable logo can go a long way when it comes to branding your game. Not only will a good logo stick in players’ minds, but it can also let players know something important about your game: maybe it’s what your game is about, or its genre. A logo can also embody the tone, mood, or theme of your game.
Sometimes creating a logo can seem like a daunting task. In fact, I prefer to wait until the UI, story, and art assets are all done before I start designing my logos. Putting the logo first is kind of like designing a book cover without having the actual book written.
There is no right or wrong way to design a logo. But through trial and error in creating my own logos, I have stumbled across a process that I like to use when designing logos. My process can be broken down into four parts: Think, Gather, Explore, and Refine. Below we will explore what each step entails, and hopefully you can glean some good insight and ideas.
Step 1: Think
Before you even get started, I recommend that you spend some time thinking about what you want for your logo. Consider how you want your logo to look and feel. Maybe there’s a certain icon or symbol you’d like to use, or maybe certain colors or typefaces. Is there anything you’d like to avoid doing, or any styles you don’t like? At this point in the process, it’s OK to be open to ideas and let your mind wander a bit! You don’t have to make any decisions yet, but thinking about things first and trying to get clear on what you might want to do for your logo can help set things in motion.
Step 2: Gather
After you’ve spent some time considering all of the different possibilities, it’s time to gather inspiration and information! When you do research and look for inspiration, you gain a better understanding of what’s out there, and also start to get some ideas for how your logo might look like. You don’t necessarily have to look at other game logos either – in fact, you don’t even have to look at other logos at all to get inspiration! I would encourage you to even take a step outside of logo design / game design – and dig a bit deeper. For example, if you were creating a game is about fashion design, it might be a good idea to look at the fashion industry and certain fashion designers and use that as inspiration for your logo. Maybe there are fashion styles, textures, or fabrics that you could pull from. You could even go through your own wardrobe, go window shopping, or watch runway shows in order to gather inspiration.
When we created the logo for Miss Bullard’s School for Former Ladies, we knew we wanted to create something elegant and feminine. The game takes place in London during the Victorian era, so we also wanted the logo and UI design to reflect that.
We spent time gathering visual information about the Victorian Era and London in the 1800s. Since the game focuses on young women at a boarding and etiquette school, we also looked into the styles that women wore at that time too. Cameo brooches were popular as jewelry, and all of those elements together inspired the logo for Miss Bullard’s School for former ladies.
Step 3: Explore
Once you’ve gathered your research, ideas, and inspiration, it’s time to start creating your logo! How you do this is entirely up to you. You can start with sketches, or jump straight into a design program if you feel comfortable doing so.
When you first start working on your logo, it can help to iterate and explore multiple ideas and options. At this point, it helps to approach the design of your logo with a more playful and open approach. I would stress it’s important not to get too hung up on the details yet – and give yourself some time to see what kind of cool variations you can come up with!
And now it’s story time! A few years ago at my day job, our team was tasked with organizing a morale-boosting event for our entire company. We decided to go with a Game of Thrones themed event – and promptly set out to turn our company mascot (a squirrel) into a House Sigil. To those of you who are unfamiliar with / not a fan of Game of Thrones – (just so you aren’t confused or wondering what the heck I am referring to) – there are multiple factions and groups of people within the Game of Thrones universe. Each group usually has its own “house sigil” – where they use heraldic designs to represent their groups.
So, in order to get started on our squirrel sigil, I decided to explore our options by creating multiple sketches. This allowed us to envision how different shapes, species of squirrel, and poses might work out. Below are some of the sketches I drew:
I actually drew a lot more than this (over 50 different sketches)!! But at the end of the day we did have to narrow it down to just one squirrel, which brings us to our next step:
Step 4: Refine
After you’ve had the opportunity to explore and experiment, you’ll most likely get to a point where you’ll want to refine and tweak what you’ve got so that it looks more polished and suits what you were initially envisioning.
For our Game of Thrones-inspired squirrel sigil, I decided to spend time refining my sketches. I showed the sketches to my team and we all picked out our favorites, and then I spent some time shading them so we could see what the squirrels looked like as silhouettes.
It was unanimous that the squirrel in the middle was everyone’s favorite. He just seemed so sneaky and devious and evil looking – almost like he was plotting to take over the world or something! Which is the goal of many houses in Game of Thrones so it felt perfect.
Now that we had our sigil picked out, I decided to spend even more time refining him. He was a little rough around the edges and I decided to make him look slightly more symmetrical.
By refining the spiky edges of fur on his tail, I was able to make his design & shape look a lot more intentional and it also just looked more aesthetically pleasing. We also decided to make his eyes slightly more narrow, to enhance his mischevious/plotting/evil look. We also decided to give him an acorn, because we thought it made him look both proud and cunning – and also like he would do anything to hold onto his acorn!
