Thursday 20 April 2017

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Name, Logo, Icon, NGF


I've finally come up with a name and logo for the game -- Alien::Qualifier.
It stemmed from the creature face design looking like two colons, [::] and I figured it was quite iconic. There is a programming term for '::' called a Namespace Alias Qualifier and it's essentially used as a pointer to find information within a specific variable. Eg. [ob_character::health] would return the health of the character. The name 'Alien::Qualifier' is a pun on the programming term as the game is about aliens fighting (To find something within themselves?).

I also like the simplicity of the [::] design as it looks quite alien but it's simple and easy to replicate/ modify for other things. Qualities I heard about from graphic designer Michael Bierut. He speaks about it in 99% Invisible (Starts around 4:30).

This is the logo in both black and white versions. It incorporates the :: into the middle to bring attention back to the characters. The typeface I used is called 'Hobo std'. Due to the quirkiness of the characters and due to how I'm trying to bring more lightheartedness into the game as a whole I went for a sans serif. The curliness of the lettering is quite alien and bouncy but it's also bold as if to say 'it's sturdy but fun', which is what the game is; fun and goofy but still very defined and rigid in terms of what the player can do.

The frame around the lettering incorporates the hover bar from the aliens face into the logo but it also looks similar to the shape of the ground in the game so I ran with it and added little bumps and spikes to emulate the environment art.

All exe's have a square icon that you click on to run them. So again, I used the aliens face for the design of the icon. This image shows various alternate versions but the one I went with is number 3. I'm also using it as a twitter profile picture now too.

Here's the logo on top of the caves concept art. I'm applying to Norwich Game Festival as an exhibitor and they request an image like the one above for their website. I tried various sizes and positions for the logo but the one above is the final design and I'm very happy with how it looks.

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