Thursday, 29 January 2015

Development of the Trials of the Magi Logo

Hello World,

 
Going to do something today that I feel I should be doing more of on this blog, discuss the development of my games. As some of you may know over the past few months my focus has been on the reworking and improvement of my National Game Design Month entry, Trials of the Magi. Work has been very intensive, with a strong focus on play testing and design. Through regular playtests with a large diversity of groups, the core game has become something that I believe is eloquent and that I am very proud of. Today though, I would like to talk about one subsection of the design process in particular. The design of the logo for Trials of the Magi.


When I began working on the logo, I first took a broad look at what my game was about. This was key step as a logo is the first thing a player associates with your and you want it to make a good connection to the game experience. Trials of the Magi is a game about arcane magic, manipulating the world around us, and exploring mental landscapes. With that in mind I began looking for fonts that fit this arcane theme. I choose to start with finding a font because it is often the most limiting aspect of a design. I get my fonts from www.dafont.com as they have a great supply of free fonts and some are even free to use for commercial use. Through my browsing I found a number of fonts that worked but only two that really stood out. With these two Ideal options found, I began organizing them in different layouts.

Having font and layout options found, we began to look at possible designs for the overall logo. With the game taking place in mental landscapes and the prominent featuring of the Fracture mechanic [Where characters and enemies fracture and shatter instead of death and injuries]. With this being such a unique feature, I wanted to encapsulate it in the title. So tried to include a broken or shattering glass design as a background to the title. Combining this with a space/nebula styled design created a nice arcane glass look. This was played with to create a variety of options. However, once I finished exploring this option, I decided to play around with the idea of an arcane  flame background. This idea showed some real potential and after a number of iterations it had become something I was quite happy with.


With a logo design drawn up I then confirmed that design and colors worked in on a white background, on a black background, in B&W and on a color background. After some minor adjustments to the colors, I was able to produce something that worked.

I may not be the greatest at graphic design, but I had an absolute blast creating the logo for Trials of the Magi. It is nice to be able to express my intentions through so many aspects of the project and I can’t wait to develop the game into a physical project. To Stay up to date on TotM’s development be sure to stay tuned to future blog posts or follow me on twitter @MTTJ_Patrick, and as always, thanks for reading.


-Patrick Lapienis

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