Typography for Entropia

Creating the initial brand and name for my company I took it upon myself to research typography and the importance of said type, this was vital in being able to create a concise brand with high attention to detail by seeing how it’s done in industry. The same thing applies to creating a game and any other medium which requires Type to convey a message, which is why I’m further researching typography which can be applicable to Entropia my proposed IP for Campfire Studios.

I decided to look at free fonts relating to the theme’s my game will deal with. Entropia as mentioned before will be focused around a sole survivor of an unspecified pandemic whereby the world is in a post-apocalyptic state, the games theme’s will highlight the beauty of nature reclaiming what was once dominated by people along with various other elements. The focus however will mainly be nature reclaiming the world, using this knowledge I decided to look for natural/nature fonts.

I used the website http://www.fontspace.com and just searched the key term, Nature Fonts. I found 4 good examples which all have strengths of their own, I aim to evaluate them and decide on at least 2 to try and apply them to work on my game poster.

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The 4 fonts I picked all have different qualities to them which I like, the first font Instinto is very reminiscent to me of the font used in the game The Last of Us. It’s clear, concise and bold, it feels like a stamp marking the authority of the game without the need to look fancy or try too hard, it’s also easily legible on any background which is a huge benefit without the need to take too much extra consideration on the overall look of the poster.

The 2nd font in the list is Ashes-Ashes, it has a rough look to it which is somewhat burnt out, it could be thematically appropriate for the game and some of the themes within it which is why I chose it. The negatives to a font like this are that it’d have to fit with the poster of the game, the visual themes within the poster will have to reflect why I chose this font meaning extra consideration will have to be given towards my concept art and sketches for the game.

The 3rd font is called Rustic, overall I prefer the look and feel of this font to the others. The font is made to look similar to foliage and flowers but it’s still concise and gets the message across. The font will also look good with the idea I had for the poster where a person is emerging from a crumbling city where plants and tress are growing in the city. This font is the most likely contender to be used as my final choice, but without a comparison I’m still undecided.

The final font is called Logs, it uses a similar theme to Rustic however it looks far too cartoony and out of place for its application, I chose it at first for some variation in typography, but in comparison to the others it looks the most out of place.

The next step to take with the typography is to apply it to some concept art and see whether it flows as an overall piece or whether it looks jarring. If any of  the fonts works then I wont have the need to do further research, however if not I’ll look at further examples which may be more applicable.

Bibliography:-

http://www.fontspace.com/lj-design-studios/instinto

http://www.fontspace.com/icedragon/ashes-ashes

http://www.fontspace.com/intellecta-design/rustic

http://www.fontspace.com/character/sketch-logs

Importance of Typography in branding

The most noticeable feature of these logos is that neither heavily rely on the imagery rather they put focus on the typographic design itself. This is possibly due to the fact that lesser know indie companies need to make their name known hence the image isn’t centralised as much as the actual typography used to represent the brand.  Another important aspect to acknowledge is the usage of basic block colours and why this is an essential part in company branding. The general idea behind keeping a logo simplistic has a multitude of reasons, these tend to be: Clarity of message, Applicability across different forms of media, Expense and how Explicable it is. Understanding these key components allows for a brand to be created and represented in a quick, memorable manner.

Taking this research into account I will make further amendments to my logo’s and experiment with different ideas focusing around typography and how centric it is as a part of indie branding.


CSMojang-Logo

Naughty_Dog

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Logo Variations

After designing my first logo I wanted to continue on with the theme and idea of “Campfire Studios”. The very first logo I designed had a few elements I liked and wanted to further explore, but there were still a few things that bugged me, primarily the mountain not being central and the font feeling out of place and too confined within the bubble, taking this into account I made further alterations to it.

brand mock up

The second version I made I decided to add a banner which sits underneath the original circle frame, I felt as though this was a good addition for the logo, it felt thematically appropriate for the idea of camp-fires and  in my opinion just compliments the image overall. Another thing I changed was the font, I wanted something which felt more organic and appropriate with the image as a whole, the original font used felt too formal for the rough nature of the wilderness/camp-fire.

 

The final rendition of the logo I decided to add a few more features to make use of the empty white space, I slightly altered the position of the banner and made it smaller, and I also added some clouds to the mountain top, overall I feel as though this logo is almost finalised and can see it being used for the branding of my imagined company and  IP

v.2.1

Logo Mock-Up (Design 1)

After researching colour palettes I figured I would use the skills I learnt earlier and put them into practical use to create a logo for my branding brief. This logo is just an initial starting point as to get a feel for the general aesthetics of my imagined company and their IP ‘Entropia’

Campfire Brand

For the first image I picked some colours I liked and just started to play around with the themes of nature, wilderness, and cold. I like the idea of playing with Juxtaposition, hence the name Campfire and the central focus on on the red/orange colours.

brand mock up

This image is a rough finalised idea, I like the idea of the logo being circular, I feel as though it wraps the information in a bubble which takes away from the distractions of letting the art run further off the page, also it adds to the central focus of the fire.

Overall I feel as though this logo could use some further development to make it a potential piece of work I’d keep for a final hand in.

 

 

Workshop 2 – Colour Palettes

During the second workshop of Semester B I followed a tutorial on Colour Palettes and the importance of complimentary colours within design. For this exercise I started by visiting Pinterest and found images which I liked, from there the exercise continued in Adobe Illustrator and Indesign.

I found the exercise to be more informative than I first thought, and I found myself breaking down every image I liked to it’s Complimentary Colours and Shades. Overall I feel as though the exercise is a good skill to practice, not only does it look visually appealing and professional but it also changes mundane work to something you don’t mind examining further.

 

Colour palette Colour palette2 Colour palette3 Colour palette4 Colour palette5 Colour palette6 Colour palette7 Colour palette8

 

A link to higher resolution versions of these images is below.

Colour palette