Logos (and I mean more than one)

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zaydana
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Post by zaydana »

jackS:

well... the logo i made symbolizes two curved lines and a straight line :P Basically the background information on the logo is that one day about 2 years ago, i got bored, and designed about 60 little icons on the back of my notepad - this one is just the one i felt would work best for VS. Go ahead and make up some smybolism behind it that you think suits the game, i know there shuld be some. For me tho, its more a matter of does it look good or not? :P

I'm an artist, you are a docs guy ;)
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Post by Halleck »

Hm... perhaps, zaydana, you could take some cues from CoJL's last text logo submission:
Image

Personally, I think that his typographic treatment of "Vega Strike" is more appropriate. Certainly look at how he makes the text stand out, and that really cool background stuff he has in the oval- IMO it is a very strong design overall. Perhaps, with a design like that, your logo could be incorporated as a central symbol (or, with some tweaking, it could replace the S).

That's my $0.02 USD.
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Post by eddit »

I love Zay's logo. Understated yet unique. I assume that the logo is a barrel galaxy as that's what I thought when I first saw it.

I hate to say it, but I find CLJ latest a bit garish :-( (Not that he doesn't do great work!)

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Post by zaydana »

actually, i did look _a_lot_ at that logo of CoJL's. I think it is the best one yet, including mine, in terms of nice pictures. However, it would be sooo hard to implement it as a logo for things like web design, that I don't think it is really plausible. Oh well.
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Post by Ryder P. Moses »

It's kinda too much. Logos are better when they're somewhat simplistic; while from a technical standpoint it's very nicely executed as a logo it'd just look confused.
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Post by Halleck »

zaydana wrote:actually, i did look _a_lot_ at that logo of CoJL's. I think it is the best one yet, including mine, in terms of nice pictures. However, it would be sooo hard to implement it as a logo for things like web design, that I don't think it is really plausible. Oh well.
Whether you use as much of it as I'd like or not, please look at how he makes the text stand out. It is much clearer and more pronounced than yours (understatement can be good, but not when some people will have to recalibrate their monitors or squint very, very hard).

Typography and backgrounds aside, I personally think a good logo would be zaydana's concept, twisted into a circle to approximate the shape of an "S", for "Strike". It wouldn't have to be too obvious... for instance, look at the deus ex logo.
Image

You can make out the initials "DE" if you look hard enough, but it is a distinctive and standalone symbol. It is also visually consistent with the typographic treatment of the name "Deus Ex".

I can make a mockup later if you don't understand what I'm talking about.

BTW, we really ought to decide on a standard set of terms. Remember when the professional logo designer came, and made that logo with the outline of the ship? (It seems to have been lost, sadly, as it was posted as an attatchment.) He used the following terms, as defined by professionals:

Logo = The central symbol, emblem, or insigna used to represent something.
Typographic Treatment = The font or special characters used to write the name of something.

In the past, we've all used 'logo' to either mean just text, or text with some sort of cool effect. Presently, we need to make the difference as clear as possible, since both are needed and must be discussed seperately.

EDIT: I've made an ultra-quick mockup:
Image
The idea being that this could be used to replace the "s" in a text logo. With more time, I could demonstrate my concept more clearly... maybe I'll make an improved proof of concept this weekend.
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Post by zaydana »

no offense, but i think that sort of ruined my logo. As much as the "S" is a nice idea, it would need to be designed for that. And personally, i don't see why a logo needs to be like a letter. There are plenty of logos which have nothing to do with letters, believe it or not. Half-life (i know, greek alphabet, but its not in the name) is one. A lot of national companies use a map of their coutnry as logo. Some companies use something along the lines of an eye for their logo.

Logos are logos, not letters. There needs to be two things, imo, that a logo fulfills. One, it doesn't hurt your eye, two, it is memorable. If a logo does those two things, its fine. People are going to rather a nice-looking logo, which maybe has some sort of stylistic relation to a project, than a semi-cooked logo with the initials of a project in it.

Anyhow... my opinion doesn't really matter that much compared to that of some more prominent figures in the community, so lets hear what jackS has to say. I really want to move along with this and make a better website/logo, without all the beurocracy. Otherwise i'll lose interest and it will be buried at the bottom of my hard-drive till kingdom come.
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Post by jackS »

I'd rather we avoid moving "S"wards. Being merely a stylized S is something I'd rather leave to Superman's logo.

I am quite taken with the current form of the logo, and though, in childlike idle fancy, I often consider tinkering with it slightly, I am also hesitant to wantonly call for such to actually be done, lest it become something less appealing than it now is. That said, let us consider the symbolism we aim to create, and then attempt to discover what tinkering will stem more from need than want.

I cannot help but think of our galaxy, viewed on its side, when seeing the centermost portion of the logo. The question that thus arises is what is enclosing it in our view, if nothing else (or more precisely, what are the two curves a stylized depiction of?). The first impulse that does not strike me poorly is to think of them as the physical portions, one extending from above, the other from below, of a looking-glass-like viewer. I imagine the viewer initially more in view, the scale in general larger, and the initial subject in view to be void polluted by stars, debris, and cold, silent death panned over by a rotating viewpoint. Then, a series of successive "zoom-outs" of a sort(although it seems more reasonable, given the scale to consider step functions rather than continuous ones) each shrinking the size of the viewer as well(though this may look better in continuous fashion even if the contents change more abruptly): planetary locale, stellar locale, "arm-level-locale" (for lack of a shorter description) and galaxy level locale, the logo being a stylization of a the moment when, rotating, the galaxy in view comes to present itself in profile.

Discuss, suggest, provide alternatives, etc.
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Post by zaydana »

i think my favourite suggestion in terms of symbolism so far is that it is is basically a styalized spiral galaxy. So, the two curves are arms, the thing in the center could be the bar of a barred spiral galaxy (which some experts now think the milky way is), etc. etc. This would lead to an easy enoguh animation to do later on, if we ever get to one. I don't quite understand what you asid jackS, but i think its pretty similar to what i'm about to say :-)

So, if we ever did a movie, we could zoom out from viewer level (like you said), and the view of the galaxy would become more and more like the pictures we see of galaxies, until it shrinks into the outline of a barred spiral, then it somehow morphs into that logo. Could work, if we ever need it to. But while we don't have people complaining that there isn't a movie to go with the logo, we can leave it (which i think means leaving it indefinitely). And while we don't have outside people (notice the specific group i am talking about) complaining about the lack of symbolism in the logo, we don't need to worry about it :-) If anybody ever asks, its a styalized barred spiral galaxy.

So, i think thats pretty similar to what you said, just maybe with my own twist on it. Acceptable? Can i do stuff with it yet? :-p
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Post by Silverain »

zaydana wrote:So, if we ever did a movie, we could zoom out from viewer level (like you said), and the view of the galaxy would become more and more like the pictures we see of galaxies, until it shrinks into the outline of a barred spiral, then it somehow morphs into that logo. Could work, if we ever need it to.
To be honest, I could see it going the other way. As an example:

Start of video
Fade in from black onto logo and pause for a few seconds
Move in on the logo
Logo morphs to spiral galaxy
Galaxy expands
Centre and close in on a single star system
Close in on a feature of the system e.g. a single ship - the player's ship.
Various video activities (battles, flight etc, story and so on)
Then as a close off, reverse the opening process back to the logo, music stops, fade to black.
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Post by zaydana »

@silverain:

yeah that works too. either way, we probably will never need to worry about it - or atl east not in the next 4 or 5 years.
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Post by jackS »

Barred spiral is very tempting as well, indeed, it was what I first tried to make my mind wander towards (if you look back in the thread, I even mentioned it earlier) but I haven't quite wrapped my head (even given that it's a stylization) of the very non-spiral angle and location of the two arms. We could try and see if minor changes in either of those two attributes (suggestion, rather than aping, of the traditional spiral shape - too big a change would be a change _in_ logo rather than of) reduce the uneasiness with thinking "barred spiral".

As for the particulars of any non-stylized versions of the emblem, animated or otherwise, we'll consider that after we nail the semantics and presentation of the iconic version. I presented such in my previous post because it was the simplest way that came to me to express the semantics of a "viewer". I'd prefer the barred spiral basis if we can make that work.
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Post by zaydana »

well, i think the idea of the stylized logo is that it does not need to be that accurate as to what something would really be like, so the barred spiral _could_ work, and if we ever got to an animation, that would make it would a lot better i think. Btw, i probably got the barred spiral thing off of you :-p

The other thing tho, which i think could have been the original idea (i made the logo a few years ago so i can't remember) would be some sort of portal/wormhole/whatever, but it soudns like that don't fit in the VS universe, unless it was some ancient artifact or something else along those lines. I'm not hopeful of that working tho, unless theres something which would be central to the universe that i don't know about?
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Post by jackS »

zaydana wrote:well, i think the idea of the stylized logo is that it does not need to be that accurate as to what something would really be like, so the barred spiral _could_ work, and if we ever got to an animation, that would make it would a lot better i think.
To reiterate from my last post - even given that it's a stylization, the fact that the curves both run between pi/2 and 3pi/2 (90 to 270 degrees) makes me uneasy in thinking of it as a spiral. How hard would it be to experiment with pivoting the curves about the nearer-center points of the curves and moving the more distant point a few degrees outward?
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Post by klauss »

zaydana wrote:The other thing tho, which i think could have been the original idea (i made the logo a few years ago so i can't remember) would be some sort of portal/wormhole/whatever, but it soudns like that don't fit in the VS universe, unless it was some ancient artifact or something else along those lines.
I really really do like that idea. Make the logo apear in some kind of alien artifact (or whatever story element) in the single player campaign - near the end - that would make it much more meaningful, without requiring explicit iconology.

And the barred galaxy fits nicely in that logo... seen off-axis. It's just a matter of playing with the perspective, no need to modify the logo at all. Besides, once the video is in motion, people will hardly notice or care about any minor discrepancy.
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Post by Halleck »

I see. Yes zaydana, I realize that a logo like the one I was imagining would have to be designed in order to look that way... I was using your logo to make an ultra-quick mockup of my idea.

It seems that the general consensus is to not include an explicit s-shape, but instead go for some sort of barred spiral galaxy. In that case, I present this rendering for your consideration:

Image
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ ... er_f50.jpg (large resolution)

I also found a photograph of NGC 1365, which is closer in shape to our current logo (I'm not sure if this has to do with the type of bar, or merely the angle of the photograph):
Image
The former has much tighter curves, and happens to be more like what I had in mind. However, It seems like there is a general leaning towards less of a tight curve- more like the latter image. I won't press too hard for my idea of what I think the logo should be, but I think there is a way for it to satisfy everyone.

By the way, I found st_jack's old logo thread, and his uploads have somehow been restored.

http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... php?t=3815
Even if it's not used as a logo for the game itself, I still think this should be seriously considered for inclusion as the confed insignia.
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Post by jackS »

klauss wrote:
zaydana wrote:The other thing tho, which i think could have been the original idea (i made the logo a few years ago so i can't remember) would be some sort of portal/wormhole/whatever, but it soudns like that don't fit in the VS universe, unless it was some ancient artifact or something else along those lines.
I really really do like that idea. Make the logo apear in some kind of alien artifact (or whatever story element) in the single player campaign - near the end - that would make it much more meaningful, without requiring explicit iconology.

And the barred galaxy fits nicely in that logo... seen off-axis. It's just a matter of playing with the perspective, no need to modify the logo at all. Besides, once the video is in motion, people will hardly notice or care about any minor discrepancy.
I see your point about the off-axis angle now. Groovy. Barred Spiral it is - and there's no reason a barred spiral logo can't appear on items :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
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Post by zaydana »

awesome idea klauss! I never would have thought of that.

So... does this mean i can start on the website now?
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Post by jackS »

zaydana wrote:awesome idea klauss! I never would have thought of that.

So... does this mean i can start on the website now?
To exercise some expediency at the expense of some pretense of democracy, I'm going to say Yes - we can start thinking about website design now, although the task of logo work isn't done: we have the stylized-icon level of the abstraction, but we'll still want to have more versions walking up the abstraction layer towards an actual barred spiral :) - see CoJL's list of "things we should have for a complete proposal"
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Post by Halleck »

It seems as if a consensus has been reached, but I will post my new mock-up anyway. It's fairly crude, but it demonstrates the shape that I think will work best:
Image

Please consider that with a more narrow shape, it will be difficult to use the logo to fill up a square, such as the program icon.
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Post by dandandaman »

Coolness, we've got movement! :-)

Just FYI, here's some hand drawn classification symbols (yes, there are vector versions somewhere, but I don't hav the patience to track them down :-P).... the bottom row is the series of different barred spirals etc :-)

http://www.aqua.co.za/assa_jhb/Canopus/c99aEvZ.htm

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Post by Halleck »

Thanks dandandaman. I really like those SBb and SBc shapes.
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Image Pack

Post by zaydana »

I've tried to do up as many of the seperate images here as I could in the original specification that CoJL made. If there anything important missing, then tell me and I'll try to do it up. Btw, the longtext/square ones I missed on purpose, as theres not much you can do with them that isn't exactly the same in the longtext/rectangle ones - at least not much I could think of.

If you want a .zip with all the .psd files (remember, every .png below has a 100% vector .psd twin), then contact me and I can e-mail it. However, I'd rather not put it up on the forums at the moment, as it is a rather large file and could take a while to upload. If I get enough requests, I may upload it to the sf.net hosting later on.

Presuming theres nothing too wrong with what I've got here, i'll move onto the website layout.

Comments/questions?
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Web Layout

Post by zaydana »

Well, heres my first (rather awful) draft for a header for the layout. I really do need ur opinions/criticism/suggestions here :-)

Note: The colors on the attachment preview look different than the real colors. Open it to find out.
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Post by dandandaman »

Well, the white in the main logo isn't white enough. The highlights need to be as bright, if not brighter, than the ship... otherwise your eye is drawn to the ship rather than the spiffy logo! The subtitle text is good though, it shouldn't stand out too much (and it doesn't).

Just a question as well .. why that ship?

In general then, I don't know if it's just this tft screen, but the black background looks washed out rather than black ... and maybe a *little* barren? I think just keep in mind that we don't want to be going back to the dark old days of an all black site with colour text ... at least, I think we don't ;-) The header can get away with being black etc

But (and don't take that chunk the wrong way, I just thought it best to get *everything* I thought could be fixed written down) it's a pretty good first attempt at trying to combine it into something, you're just capable of better (and from your comment you know it ;-) ). :-)

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