Hey, Hive!
A little change from the usual again, doing a contest submission. Not for Splinterlands this time, but for another HIVE card game. RAGNAROK! There has been a lot of buzz about this upcoming game, a lot of speculation as well. And, of course, the logo contest they're hosting.
This is my submission to it.
Along with the progress screenshots, I'll be explaining why I did what I did, from concept to completed product. While I'm primarily an artist, I do take on some graphic design jobs as well. This experience has given me some insight and I'm going to share it with you.
First thing's first:
All elements to the design, along with those on the splash images, are created by hand and the copyright is fully mine. In graphic design, creating your own elements is important to make sure you can sell the commercial rights to your client. You can also purchase a commercial license to stock elements you want to use in your design. Either way, always make sure you have the rights and licenses to use elements and sell the design. This includes fonts as well.
• CONCEPT SKETCHES •
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Like a painting, designing requires concepts that you start with in sketches. This is to get a feel for the final product and work out composition. Now composition is an interesting topic, that probably deserves its own post, but for now just keep in mind the Rule of Thirds.
2-5 concept sketches is a great start to designing. Interestingly, it works similar to poetry. Make several versions then try a synthesis version of all the previous ones. For the Ragnarok logo, I made 3 concept sketches but settled on my favourite 2 as shown above. I was pretty happy with the second concept so I continued without the synthesis step.
Now, why this concept idea, with the ouroboros in all the sketches? Ideally, when you're designing a product, you get a brief which lays out what the client wants, sometimes to great detail.
The Ragnarok logo contest post is the brief in this instance. And while it might not seem like it has a lot of detail to work from, it's packed with information for designing.
And this leads to the why of using the ouroboros; the serpent eating its own tail. This is where doing research or having knowledge of topics related to your client is a huge boon. The Ragnarok game focuses on mythology, specifically the deities thus far as we've been able to glean from their other posts. Contrary to the game's name, it doesn't only focus on Germanic mythology (those Norse gods everyone knows about now). So using Norse or Germanic imagery is not inclusive of the entire game and thus not of the whole product (despite how cool Danish bearded axes look).
So, with a little knowledge in various mythologies around the globe, I know that the idea of a serpent consuming itself exists is many, many mythologies. Though "ouroboros" is the Greek name for it, you can find this symbol and idea in nearly every continent.
The game's base theme is a giant universal conflict where all realms collide...
The other reason for choosing this mythological symbol is how I interpreted a sentence in the Ragnarok brief:
History repeats itself over and over for the rest of time.
Lastly, why I chose the ouroboros is because dragons (including serpents) are near-universally associated with mythology. So having one in the design shows the viewer immediately that this product deals with mythology in some form or other.
• CLEAN-UP •
Once I'm happy with the concept I've chosen, it's time to clean up and refine the design. And, like every stage, there are questions and decisions to be made. At this point, I was asking myself in what style the serpent should be made. Do I paint it, give it an artist feel? Maybe something more relevant to the industry would be better. So I researched.
I looked up the graphics used in the gaming industry. What was the current trend and which trend stood the test of time? That's how I came to doing a sort of screen-print vector art style. Once the serpent's final silhouette was cemented, I focused on the typography.
And typography is important in designing a product. The iconography is useful, and vital, but the text makes the brand. I played with different font designs in the concept stage, but gravitated to the font that turned out to be a mixture of Greek and Futhark and Cyrillic in appearance. This way, it still feels mythological and ancient but also doesn't point to one specific culture or country.
• COLOURS & STYLISING •
This is the difficult part. Unless a client's brief specifies their desired colours, choosing which colours would work best for a product is a hair-pulling frustration. I spent a good few days just trying to figure out what colours I was going to use, working with various palettes.
I ended up going with the tried and true orange-purple contrast palette. The warm colours giving a welcoming and community-involved feel to the product but also conveying a sense of action.
Then I got an idea and went back to Ragnarok's profile and looked at their posts. What colours did they themselves gravitate toward using in their posts? And the answer was gold. Which worked brilliantly with my palette choice. Gold and purple were still complimentary colours and there wasn't a clash.
• RAGNAROK LOGO •
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• RAGNAROK ICON •
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With the logo complete, I turned my attention to designing the icon. Why would I when the brief only mentioned wanting a logo? Simply, because a logo and icon are generally a package, both in usage and in design. A brand will want a full logo for large marketing purposes but will also need an icon version of that logo for uses that don't offer much space.
Think about the Netflix logo. It's the full name with the iconic N. That iconic N is used, for instance, in profile pictures or an app icon. It's easy to recognise. That's what I did with the Ragnarok logo.
It was easier to build the icon after the logo was done, just a shift in proportions, really. But it's obvious that the two designs belong to the same product, the same brand. And so, with a little bit of a sort wrist, the design was done.
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