So, this year has begun with being split into groups, for our final project. I was placed into group two, and given the role of team leader, my team consisted of, Joey Brown, who was selected for his ideas and concept designs, as well as his 3D skills. Stuart Wade was chosen for his concept art, and to help promote his communication capabilities. Micheal Prior, who was added to the roster for his ability with 3D and idealisms, Curtis Stoyles for his ideas, and photoshop work, and finally myself, obviously for my ideas, concept art and to help promote and improve my communications skills in a leadership manner.
Our first task, consisted of select our team name. It is important that a name is concise, straight forward, I believe a little witty as well, easy to say, it was stated that a name should not be more than two syllabals this helps to make sure that the name is easy to pronouce, and understand when spoken. So in our teams we sat down with a sheet of A3 paper, and began the process of brainstorming our ideas. It was suggested that we add at least three names, of course most in my team came up with many more, which of course I was rather pleased with, as this showed enthusiasm towards the project undertaking.
I put forward more than the suggested three per member, and the one that recieved the most votes was Explosive Matrix. I had a feeling that this would be the one chosen, and one that appealed to me, so I was happy when this was the selected name. Although I will admit it was difficult logo concept, and didn't have many ideas brimming at the time, so I knew there was going to be challenge with the final conceptual idea's.
The other names that where selected by the group where as follows, Holy Turtle from Micheal, which I thought this particular name was intuitive, quite funky and I thought was rather unique. I knew Micheal had an idea of where to progress with this name, with his enthusiasm was well noted.
Chaotic Moose, from Joe Brown. This name again was unique, and his design ideals, reminded me a lot of Manard Moose, I think a lot of thought when into the design asthetics, but I have to say I was not a fan of the name itself, I didn't think it expressed much in the terms of game develop studio, which is why I voted against this particular name. A better alternative could have been Chaotic Pioneers, or Dev.Moose, something that related somewhat to development, which would have been more founded.
Stuart Wade's was Cybertronix. He had a little help from the team in developing this name, and we believe it represents more of a gaming environment, and a little bit of a tech software development environment. Still it was one of the more favoured names, and his design idealism, was brilliant, if not second to none. I have to say now, out of all the logos this was my favourite.
Explosive Matrix came to me through my recent work with 3D Graphics Programming, working with Matrices and Vertices, gave me inspiration with the name, select matrix as a 3D term, one familar with the asepct of programming in a 3D Environment. Explosive, this word was to add a air of gaming to it, most by giving a general concept of gaming enthusiasm.
Below is the tally sheet of the name ideas and those in our group. Unfortunatly, Curtis Stoyles could not be present for the task, due to unforseen circumstance, so we had to leap on without him, and hope to catch him up and keep him informed, when he returns. This had provided us with a disadvantage towards the other groups, intially we had one less than the other two groups to begin with, and without Curtis, we are down to four members, meaning we have to put the extra effort in, and hope he makes hasty return.
With these ideas, I expanded on them a little, taking into context certain aspects, I even had a practice
at creating one of the logo templates, coming up with this design attempt.
Our first task, consisted of select our team name. It is important that a name is concise, straight forward, I believe a little witty as well, easy to say, it was stated that a name should not be more than two syllabals this helps to make sure that the name is easy to pronouce, and understand when spoken. So in our teams we sat down with a sheet of A3 paper, and began the process of brainstorming our ideas. It was suggested that we add at least three names, of course most in my team came up with many more, which of course I was rather pleased with, as this showed enthusiasm towards the project undertaking.
I put forward more than the suggested three per member, and the one that recieved the most votes was Explosive Matrix. I had a feeling that this would be the one chosen, and one that appealed to me, so I was happy when this was the selected name. Although I will admit it was difficult logo concept, and didn't have many ideas brimming at the time, so I knew there was going to be challenge with the final conceptual idea's.
The other names that where selected by the group where as follows, Holy Turtle from Micheal, which I thought this particular name was intuitive, quite funky and I thought was rather unique. I knew Micheal had an idea of where to progress with this name, with his enthusiasm was well noted.
Chaotic Moose, from Joe Brown. This name again was unique, and his design ideals, reminded me a lot of Manard Moose, I think a lot of thought when into the design asthetics, but I have to say I was not a fan of the name itself, I didn't think it expressed much in the terms of game develop studio, which is why I voted against this particular name. A better alternative could have been Chaotic Pioneers, or Dev.Moose, something that related somewhat to development, which would have been more founded.
Stuart Wade's was Cybertronix. He had a little help from the team in developing this name, and we believe it represents more of a gaming environment, and a little bit of a tech software development environment. Still it was one of the more favoured names, and his design idealism, was brilliant, if not second to none. I have to say now, out of all the logos this was my favourite.
Explosive Matrix came to me through my recent work with 3D Graphics Programming, working with Matrices and Vertices, gave me inspiration with the name, select matrix as a 3D term, one familar with the asepct of programming in a 3D Environment. Explosive, this word was to add a air of gaming to it, most by giving a general concept of gaming enthusiasm.
Below is the tally sheet of the name ideas and those in our group. Unfortunatly, Curtis Stoyles could not be present for the task, due to unforseen circumstance, so we had to leap on without him, and hope to catch him up and keep him informed, when he returns. This had provided us with a disadvantage towards the other groups, intially we had one less than the other two groups to begin with, and without Curtis, we are down to four members, meaning we have to put the extra effort in, and hope he makes hasty return.
As you can see many idea's where spread across, and we had more than a few names which we wanted to use. The selected favourites which we was tasked to develop into a logo where as follows.
- Myself: Explosive Matrix
- Micheal Prior: Holy Turtle
- Joey Brown: Chaotic Moose
- Stuart Wade: Cybertronics
So, it came down to design, with my brain lacking in any idea of how I was going to achieve an effective logo. I sat down and began to think about what made me come up with Explosive Matrix, as a programmer, I knew in 3D Graphics that a matrix was used, especially in OpenGL to help render 3D Vertices and Points. So, taking that into consideration, what is a "Matrix" usually inmagined as, minus a world created by machines where humans minds are linked too, so they can harvest humans as batteries, a Matrix is a 3D Cube, least, represented as one. I took this into context, so numerous thoughts now hit me. What was a cube? Rubix Cubes, Computer Towers, were somewhat cuboid. I even tried to influence the Mathematical Matrix Symbol to incorporate a more general approach to the matrix and make it more funky, and simplistic.
I tried to keep in mind Simplicity and memorisation. The memory had to be easily recognisable, digestable in one bite, and easy on the eyes. Not too detailed and taking in context those with difficulties in sight as well. For this reason I chose bright colours, to help make it stand out, and tried to avoid too many details. See the two concepts sheets below, with annotation to get a better idea on what ideas I came up with. The final concept was the logo I dubbed, "Literal Matrix" for it's literal matrix mathetical routes.
at creating one of the logo templates, coming up with this design attempt.
This design, was the breaking up logo, and was my first attempt at creating the logo itself, of course this is nothing like the chosen logo and was merely select as a method of attempting to incorporate a 3D logo. In the end this logo was not selected as the final product. What I like about this logo specifcally though, is the incorporation of physics and 3D. Gaming is particular is more renowned for the aspect of 3D Models and Physics and because of that is one of the reasons decided to see how this particular design would play out.
So with the final logo selected, and a new design being developed in photoshop I began to create what I invisioned on paper, I was generally happy to admit that the literal design that was selected, I was more than pleased about, it was a simple design, and one I thought would work both professionally and one I knew I had the skills to develop with little to no problems.
I set up photoshop, with the following setting.
- A6 Page Format Size (? cm and ? cm)
- DPI - 72 - This format allowed for a neutral depth in pixels, and when it came to printing, allows us to
print with a good crisp standard.
- The end file was saved as .png for good compression and tranferability, and so it reacts well if placed on
a webpage or alternatively a video game case or tech product.
Below was the final product, I will talk through the development steps afterwards, and then dicuss a little bit on the designs and inspiration and move onto comparison with a professional example.
So with the final logo selected, and a new design being developed in photoshop I began to create what I invisioned on paper, I was generally happy to admit that the literal design that was selected, I was more than pleased about, it was a simple design, and one I thought would work both professionally and one I knew I had the skills to develop with little to no problems.
I set up photoshop, with the following setting.
- A6 Page Format Size (? cm and ? cm)
- DPI - 72 - This format allowed for a neutral depth in pixels, and when it came to printing, allows us to
print with a good crisp standard.
- The end file was saved as .png for good compression and tranferability, and so it reacts well if placed on
a webpage or alternatively a video game case or tech product.
Below was the final product, I will talk through the development steps afterwards, and then dicuss a little bit on the designs and inspiration and move onto comparison with a professional example.
The final product, I have to admit now that I was rather very proud with this particular logo design, it to seems professional, simple and eye-catching. The feedback I recieved of the tutors as well confirmed my own thoughts, and I can quote. "That look very professional...", "Simple, Stylish, I like it" where amongst the words said about my design.
The inspiration for my design stremmed from two locations. One being the matrix used in maths. If I can direct your attention to the below image, so you can get a better ides of what I am trying to explain here.
The inspiration for my design stremmed from two locations. One being the matrix used in maths. If I can direct your attention to the below image, so you can get a better ides of what I am trying to explain here.
As you can see from above, a matrix is a group of numbers, as large as 4x4. They are encapsulated within
a square brace [ ] and often represent a square, they are used in 3D mathematics to calculate vertices and quadrants, and a key asset to 3D Mathematical Development.
This was the inspiration, I wanted with this design to stay true to the concept of a matrix but still make the logo funky, fun and eye - catching.
Development design was generally quite easy, I took inspiration from the centerpiece of the logo from my Tutor Chris Dewey no less. He did a small lecture on logo design, accompanied by a story of how he developed the Play.com logo. I remember specifically he spoke of circles being a more femnine aspect, and representing unity. I wanted to incorporate this aspect, as well as the basis that I have realised circles are a common factor in most logos, and wanted to to use them in hopes that I would gain the same kind of concept, design.
I also decided that I need to create a more manly aspect to the logo centerpiece, after all, we are a games development team. Without sounding too sexist there. I decided to add some spikes to the logo to create a more male and gaming aspect about it and it made the end product stand out just alittle bit more, instead of looking like some sort of plain logo design.
