I got the honor to design the game logotype for the game menu screen. One might think that it is a quick thing to make, but like most assets it’s as challenging as you choose to make of it. I’d say that designing text actually is one of the more challenging things I’ve gotten to do since the letters have to read easily. I made three different designs before we got one that felt right.
After a while of pondering I decided to make a very dominant 80’s style logo. A lot on our moodboard hint to the 80’s, neon type of style so I googled around and quickly found a common design that has been used in many different movies, tv shows and video games.
I used this picture as inspiration and tried to make it fit our game better. I used a comic book style font and added a platinum layer style on it. I found it for free when searching the web for a while. If you’re interested you can find this style and many more through this link.
And this is my first version of the logo:
I simply just played around with different layer styles until it felt good. I really liked how it turned out. However, art direction told me to make something less 80’s and more modern so I started over and tried a different approach.
I got the instructions to stick to the kind of style we had going on on the preliminary logo that I made for our design document, but take it even further.
Old Logo
I tried experimenting with this, having comics and airports in mind…
I showed this logo midway to not waste time again and was redirected again. It had to be even more like the old logo. Basically very straight and clean. And after that I made the logo that we are now about to use.
To put a bit of a steel-like texture on the blue letters, i first added a lot of noise on the layer to then add strong motion blur in a 0° angle. After that I played around with layer effect on two separate layers to get the right kind of lighting and shading to fit the background. I worked on top of the menu background all the time to make sure that it looked good. This is very important! Another tip I can give you is that sometimes the simplest options are the best. I searched like a maniac for a custom font that worked, but ended up using plain ol’ Arial simply because it had the style I needed for the logo. Straight and clean.
Logo together with the background. The options screen is obviously a WIP so don’t mind that please~!
All of this took a ridiculous amount of time altogether; about eight hours I think. What takes the longest is to find an approach that works with the concept and looks good. Once you find your approach, getting it done goes really fast. If you have any tips and tricks to designing text, please let me know!
Until next time!
Ida Lahti Student Log 
Hello Miss Lahti, my turn to comment!
You have been giving the task of logo design I see and this is true a very challenging part because it gets overlooked when so much else is going to be needed that you don’t focus on the small big things like logos. Because, let’s face it, the logo is a key part in selling a game. It is the first thing the player sees when experiencing a game for the first time.
You describe the process of your logo in a good way. From what inspired you to the difficulties you faced. I can see the progress of different styles that you went through and I must say that all three was very good. The last one was spot on to the theme that you are going with on your game.
The tips that you are giving is very good and satisfying when you’re designing and working on something like this. It’s good to work on top of your background if it’s meant to sort of blend together style wise.
One thing that you can do, and maybe have thought of (if you have the time), is to give the airplane in the A, an animation. Making it fly through the A and stop sometime in the A as it is now. This will give it much more life and make it more interesting. Maybe play it when pressing a button or something.
Other than that I can’t say. You write well and I understand what, why and how you have done your work, so good job!
Good Work, Good Feel, Good Luck!