Logo Design

[Jürgen Hubert]

Since I learned quite a bit about graphic design recently, I've decided to create a new logo for Urbis:



(Click on the image to see a high-res version)

What are your thoughts?

And have you designed a special logo for your own campaign worlds?

[Darkxarth]

I like it, very cool.

And,

BAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ........ HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... ha ha ha ha .... whew... no.

My art talents, even computer art, consist of stickmen.  And possibly pretty-colored letters, but not that pretty.

[Jürgen Hubert]

And,

BAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ........ HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... ha ha ha ha .... whew... no.

My art talents, even computer art, consist of stickmen.  And possibly pretty-colored letters, but not that pretty.

Actually, it's not that difficult. All you need is a decent graphics program (GIMP is decent and free) and some good tutorials to get you started - and there are thousands of those online.

(For advanced applications, I also recommend a graphics tablet, but this was done without one...)

[Velox]

It's a nice banner, and the lettering and background pics are pretty damn cool; but it seems to me more of a banner than a symbol or an icon representing a game. I like my symbols/icons to look like something someone could easily spray-paint tag onto a building, or get as a tattoo. Extra XP for players who actually do! Also, the U sorta looks like an A or something not a U. It's cool in one sense, I like the intricate pattern, but it might be too much. I dunno, maybe I'm overreacting and being critical, but that's my two cents. I'd do more than just make the name look cool; give it an actual symbol, like the U.S.A. has the bald eagle, Stevie King's "Dark Tower" series has a tower, Shadowrun has a crazy Snaky-monster-"S", and all the Deadlands books have that crazy cow skull. Maybe those energy-sapping towers in your game could make an appearance in the symbol, or maybe just a cool miniature skyline of your major city.

...and since you asked, Darkstone doesn't have a definate symbol yet, but I may do something similar to the "adeptus mechanus" symbol from Warhammer 40,000 (I didn't plagarize it, I drew something similar in junior high and have yet to use it in a game). I've got some ideas for cover design, but nothing great yet. Just a steampunk machinery looking word "stone" with an etheral and chaotic looking word "dark", with the "o" in "stone" being a gear. Maybe a flaming chunk of darkstone powering some sort of device on the cover; just alot of seemingly unrelated machinery all running from this one engine.

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Jurgen,
I've noticed you posted on EnWorld as well about this, but I'm going to respond here to the replies you've given over there... confused?  I hope so ;)  A few people have already mentioned that the "U" is hard to distinguish as a "U" for a first-time looker.  I tend to agree.  What if, just for the first letter, you used a different font that is more "U-"like?  Take, for example, how many novels tend to flowerise the first letter in a chapter with a different font, just for the contrast it provides.  I'm sure there are tons of beautiful "U"'s out there, and my computer is literally loaded with fonts that I could suggest.

As far as your other response goes (over at EnWord), you're right that standard banner size is 468x65.  However, there's a very large difference in the terms "banner" and "logo," when applied to the internet.  A banner is typically an advertisement that has to fit a specific standard so that it matches with all the other banners being advertised on a certain site.  However, looking at your webpage, I can see that you're using your design more as a page logo than a banner.  A logo can be any size, shape, form, and design, and can go anywhere on a page.  Many people have logos just in the top left of their page that are a mere 112x112 pixels.  Many have logos (such as mine on my Shadowfell page which take up most of the screen horizontal-wise, and are pretty "thick" as well.  

Now in my opinion, as far as the contrast goes, and the amount of "clutter" in the background of your Urbis logo goes, I have no problem with your banner.  Looks fine to me.  But for the sake of argument, what if, to fill in the background a bit, you stretched the font a little on the horizontal line, so that you could do with less of the cluttering images in the background?  That way, even though Urbis is a short word, it can still take up a proper amount of space so as to alleviate a bit of the background clutter that does nothing but... well, take up space.

Just a couple thoughts, but realistically, I think it's a pretty good-looking logo, and if you're satisfied with it, it will work.  You may just have to make sure the word "Urbis" is mentioned often within line of site of the banner, so that first-time viewers know what it says for certain.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

What are your thoughts?

And have you designed a special logo for your own campaign worlds?
[/quote]
I wish I had experience in graphic design or time to get over the learning curve.  Ishmayl made a wonderful logo for me.  Velox's idea of an actual icon for a world is also interesting (I hadn't really thought of it before), but I have no idea what I'd use for that right now.

[snakefing]

As far as art fonts go, you could do worse than look at Fontcraft. It's run by an old friend of mine.

There are some demo fonts you can download for free, but they are generally kind of gimped. Also, they tend to be rather ornate fonts, best used at fairly large sizes for display and artistic uses. But there's lots of different options, mostly created from actual historical lettering samples. Celtic, gothic, viking, fantasy, western, art nouveau, many other categories.

[Raelifin]

I persoanlly have enjoyed downloading some of the fonts on Cooltext.com

I agree that the banner is a bit hard to read. Blury pictures I have no problem with, but blurry text... >.>

I recently updated the Phaedoras logo. Here it is:[spoiler][/spoiler]
It's a bit boring, but it looks like a pictograph (IMO) and can be easily added upon to make a nicer image.