Week 8 DevLog Update #7 - LogoMania!!!

 

Development Log - Update #7

Week Beginning: 23/11/2020
Project Week: 8

NEWGame Title: "Zombiphobia: On Campus" NEW!


This is the big reveal...the latest version of the logo and its new name!
How it happened...

The development process over the last week is discussed below - the new logo still needs a few tweaks but it is just about done and needs road testing for feedback!

In week 7, I was still working with Students V Zombies but it wasn't working for me and wasn't catchy or original enough. A reminder of those logos...





Then I was inspired by the title of a horror game "Plasmaphobia"...
I was drawn to a bright green text colouring and a variety of ragged jagged or hard shaped fonts. With no real feel for a background - previous logos had too much artwork which distracted from the game.

Feedback from other students on the above said there wasn't enough contrast between background and text with the first couple of designs and might be better as a banner.

After much digging on dafont.com, I narrowed font styles to 4 options to be adapted to the logo. These 4 gave the right sort of font for the genre but "Nameless Harbour" gave the most flexibility as a starting point. Cracked Brainfeed was too difficult to read, Cracked Jonnie is too spread out and Zombie Control too "finished" and too detailed to be adapted. I also started trialling using eyeballs in the "o's " of Nameless Harbour.


Going forward with "Nameless Harbour" font, started to play with the size of letters and shape of the overall logo. Decided that the Z should be largest with letters increasing to I then fading away to the IA, with the idea that the colour would make the "Zombi" stand out more against a darker "phobia", as fear is considered to be dark.

The following pictures show several shape options in the Adobe word "warp" = a bit like WordArt. I chose "Bulge" as the proportions and direction of the letters felt right as it still wasn't too regular


Zombiphobia - blank and bulged!!! Below...


 After rastering to fill the white areas, I chose the vivid green from the trial logos as a base colour and used regular samples from the colour palette to progressively darken the shade of the letters in "phobia"
I converted the logo into a smart object to be able to apply more of the editing features. As shown below I was able to apply an outer glow to the text - I tried various colours but red was the most striking and blood-like.  This version also has a bevel applied . The texture is an inverted alpha texture applied directly to the text, as included in the Photoshop options. I was pretty happy with this logo, but felt like it was missing something a bit more Zombie-ish and I created some Photoshop eyeballs for the "o's" ...



Having added these and adding a bit more gore around them, the logo needed a reference to the students in the game and I sketched a mortar board to be worn by the "Z" ... the gap between the p and h didn't flow so I have trialled another student item...a backpack to improve the line, but am not sure if it adds to the overall design as shown below!


LOGO FEEDBACK

I had a few thoughts on the logo and put it to my tutor for some feedback. He wasn't keen on the rucksack, placing of the Z, the eyeballs or the "clipart"(!! impressed he thought it was clipart!) mortar board. I moved the Z, removed the backpack but the eyes and mortarboard reflect the game - I preferred the logos containing graphics in the moodboard phase.


Project Steps (and Programming)

This week, looked at logo design and noted that they shouldn't have much illustration, fonts and colours are important and these choices need to reflect the content of the game.  It's also important that the logo art doesn't fight or compete with the backdrop of the screen.

With regard to colours, this week had a rethink about font, colours and the words in the title of the game and renamed it. 

Zombie colours are greens, red, browns, blacks and a bit of yellow. The fonts need to be rough, jagged, brooding and imperfect in their design. Giving a sense of scariness or spookiness wile using uppercase of varying sizes can accentuate the logo and make it stronger.

In photoshop, building the Zombiphobia final logo used techniques such as bevelling, inner glows, "alpha patterns", outer glows, word warping, and more. In order to edit the text after rasterising, it had to be converted to a Smart Object to allow for further layer editing, like colours and bevels.

In the afternoon session, the feedback to the initial Zombiphobia design said it was too busy and there was a lot going on, with the graphics being too big and the letters too small.  So this week, I've worked solely on the logo.


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