Welcome to our first Dev Diary! Every month we’re going to chat with someone from the team to discuss an element that went into making First Moon of Mercury. These chats will be with game designers, programmers, artists, narrative designers, marketers, business developers, and more.
Today, we’re talking about the design of the First Moon of Mercury logo with Games by Stitch Art Director, Jeffrey Flores. He has been the art director at Games by Stitch for over ten years, leading the art team for games such as Elsewhere Electric, Flow Weaver and Broken Spectre.
What were your main goals for the First Moon of Mercury logo?
My main goals heading into the design were to depict a relationship between our space station and Mercury, a hint at puzzle elements, and then, to a lesser degree, have it feel evocative of the sci-fi genre.
Tell us about your process when approaching logo design.
First came brainstorming a wide range of designs. This initial phase is very experimental. I’m loose with quality, look at different arrangements and points of emphasis, and I do not limit myself to readability.
After that, I slow down a bit and spend time developing more complex ideas as well as further exploring elements that felt right from the first pass.
Once I have a more firm direction, I gather feedback from the art team first, and finally from the Games by Stitch founder, Evan. Using this feedback, I take the elements we all liked and puzzle out a way to use those ideas in a single cohesive design. From there, it’s various rounds of refinement.
What were some inspirations for the logo?
A lot of the early inspirations for the initial designs revolved around photo collage and assemblage art. I really wanted to emphasize the idea that the logo would be made of many distinct elements. Though that idea follows through in the animated version of the logo, it's less noticeable in the final static version.
What do the various elements of the logo communicate?
The design of the first "O" ended up being a happy fluke. I initially designed that as a part of an animated graphic element to go alongside one of the module shots in the trailer. I tossed it into a logo concept as a placeholder since it had the same puzzle characteristic visuals that I was looking for. It ended up only needing slight adjustments for the final version.
Later in the process, we had a small design change that changed the concept entirely.
For much of the exploration, the two "O"s were meant to represent Mercury and the space station that orbits it. During a discussion with Evan it was brought up that maybe these would instead be Mercury and the Sun, since at that stage there was a large red circle behind one of them.
But that change sparked another question: what would happen to the station? How would it be incorporated into the logo?
Well, there was a small dot that was part of the "Puzzle O." As soon as I moved it outside the letter it looked like something orbiting a planet. It was a simple solution that re-framed the Sun-Mercury-Station relationship.
What were some difficulties or challenges you faced with this logo design?
This time around we decided to do something different: we started with the trailer with only a concept for the game. We were just starting production when I began to design the logo. This change meant that I didn't have completed game-play to work off of, nor the tone of the game to match. Colour palettes hadn’t been established, nor any typography.
That being said, it was also freeing by not having to fit any of those aspects into the design.
Once a direction was decided upon, what followed was a number of smaller challenges. What version of letter shapes were ideal? How many textures to incorporate? Do the textures have the right shape language? Do we want textures at all? Are the elements overlapping in just the right amount, at the right angle? Will this design work in black and white? What typeface to use for "First" and "Of Mercury" and how to make them fit?
How do you know you've got The One?
I know I've got The One when I can look at the design and not immediately feel the urge to tweak some tiny, almost unnoticeable aspect of it!