It would be appropriate for the Phylomon game to have a special logo/typeface of its very own, to help with the 'branding'. Here's my first attempt:

Taking away the Photoshop magic, here's how that logo looks as solid black letterforms and as a set of outlines:


These letterforms can be used in other words. As an example, here's how my proposed alternate name, Phylogen, looks in those three styles:

I think the logo should look more... organic

The designs are kinda cool, very slick looking.

I'm going to agree this looks very "hard" and artificial and doesn't quite convey it's about plants and animals. Robots I'd believe, not animals.

I'm also concerned about how this would look at a smaller size. Keep in mind it has to look good at both a large size and at many smaller sizes. I'm not sure this would be easy to read when taken down to easy to fit on an internet button banner.

It would be great if we could use animals to spell out the words, or have a series of ants creating the "bridge" to make the word L, a leopard resting within the middle part of the P.

fenrislorsrai wrote:I'm going to agree this looks very "hard" and artificial and doesn't quite convey it's about plants and animals. Robots I'd believe, not animals.

[nods] I see your point; that logo looks the way it does because I was going for a sci-fi kind of 'feel', in large part because of the "seeding a blank planet" schtick I proposed for an overall theme. Something with a higher level of organicness might well be better...

I'm also concerned about how this would look at a smaller size. Keep in mind it has to look good at both a large size and at many smaller sizes. I'm not sure this would be easy to read when taken down to easy to fit on an internet button banner.

Yep; that's why I did the "solid black" and "outlines" versions, either of which should be better-able to cope with low-res presentation than is the "full Photoshop magick" version.

rawrchiteuthis wrote:It would be great if we could use animals to spell out the words, or have a series of ants creating the "bridge" to make the word L, a leopard resting within the middle part of the P.

Hmm. Not sure about that -- it seems to me that this idea would necessarily involve a bunch of fine details which would likely be lost at lower-resolution sizes.
Right now I am pondering the notion of 'assembling' the letterforms out of readily-identifiable parts of living things: For instance, the initial "P" could be two octopus-tentacles entwined together. The big question, for me, is making sure that everything remains readily recognizable at low resolutions.

Cubist wrote:

fenrislorsrai wrote:I'm going to agree this looks very "hard" and artificial and doesn't quite convey it's about plants and animals. Robots I'd believe, not animals.

[nods] I see your point; that logo looks the way it does because I was going for a sci-fi kind of 'feel', in large part because of the "seeding a blank planet" schtick I proposed for an overall theme. Something with a higher level of organicness might well be better...

I see your point. What about a logo with an artificial and an organic part? (Anything looking like the Eden Project would be cool ;-) )

Good news here. One of the forum folks here is an art director with a great looking portfolio. She'll be having a crack at logo design. Also, on general card look (which has a technical problem that we're trying to see if we can get around*).



*This being that having special "backgrounds" is problematic. The website pieces the cards via CSS positioning, so that you can look at the card on the web (looks nice), as well as print dynamically at highres. However, if you position images on top of each other, there's issues with the printing side of things. This, we've determined, we can get around by pdf generation scripts, but then that creates a much larger server strain, which could be problematic if the project gets really popular. Anyway, because of all of this, we're looking into a card "border" as oppose to a background (at least initially).

Oh and read this (http://phylomon.forumotion.net/phylomon-f1/what-s-in-a-name-t12.htm#131).

New name for project is potentially a simple "phylo"

How's this look?

davehwng wrote:How's this look?

Hmmm... don't really care for it. IMAO ( = In My Arrogant Opinion), this typeface/design is just too overtly juvenile -- children within a specific age-range may well love it to pieces, but I kinda suspect children outside that specific age-range will not go for it (and we'll be lucky if they 'only' don't care about it one way or another, as opposed to being repulsed from something that's blatantly "for little kids").

Cubist wrote:IMAO

lol

I actually like the design.

I LOVE it! Toning down the kiddie aspect a bit should be relatively easy by bringing down the size, and moving to a solid black or gray color will help.



The other thing is that a slight preference for branding towards the younger crowd might not be so bad, especially since the Science paper sort of tries to use Pokemon as the comparison model. This means that from a narrative point of view, working with the younger demographic (at least initially) is probably a smart thing (sorry for my PR lingo there).

Just for the record, the logo was put forward by Haley (http://phylomon.forumotion.net/phylomon-f1/ok-introduce-yourself-please-t1-15.htm#47). Initially, it was full length spelling "Phylomon."