Really, what you should question is why does the Triwizard Drinking Tournament have "Tri"wizards but four houses competing?
Also, to be nerdy, it's Triwizard because in the books it was between three schools, but seeing as it's much easier to dress up like a generic schoolchild rather than the specific uniforms of the other schools in the book, the houses of hogwarts were used for the pub crawl.
The logo is looking good. I do have to agree with removing the people in the background. They seem to distract and subtract more from the whole of the logo.
Really, what you should question is why does the Triwizard Drinking Tournament have "Tri"wizards but four houses competing?
Also, to be nerdy, it's Triwizard because in the books it was between three schools, but seeing as it's much easier to dress up like a generic schoolchild rather than the specific uniforms of the other schools in the book, the houses of hogwarts were used for the pub crawl.
That was probably a rhetorical question anyways.
The cookie brigade is awesome, but that is something that goes throughout PAX and isn't a community event. It's an awesome way to donate to Child's Play. The MMT is an annual event that certainly deserves the recognition.
Cronus on
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
The cookie brigade is awesome, but that is something that goes throughout PAX and isn't a community event. It's an awesome way to donate to Child's Play. The MMT is an annual event that certainly deserves the recognition.
I think you guys (i.e., someone smarter than myself) need to define amongst the group what the term "community" means. Some of us seem to be defining the community as All of the people that attend PAX (and stuff they like), whereas others appear to be associating it with just the forum members and their activities - which is understandable, since this is, according to the thread title, a Forum Logo. Hence why my suggestions for a Deep Crow or cardboard tubes were shot down. Furthermore, based on that definition, things I wouldn't consider to be "community" would include BYOC, the Omegathon, etc - stuff that anybody going to PAX knows about and participates in. I would, however, consider the Cookie Brigade to be "community" - the "regular people" partake of the cookies, sure, but the planning and coordination and execution of the encookification process takes place squarely within the bounds of the Community.
flatline on
East 2014 Status: Badge [ Friend got it ] Hotel [Crappy] BYOC [YES] Transport [ ] Name on Forum Badge [ ] Challenge Coin [ ]
Yamara, I think you did a wonderful job. My suggestion is that we really do need three versions to use.
Version one would be our printing version, which would go on anything larger than the forum badge size.
Version two would be our simplified version, which would go on things like the trading cards.
Version three would be our etching version, which would go on things like glass etchings, challenge coins, and other things that don't lend themselves to minute detail work.
As the originator of this post, I think that flatline's definition is closest to what I meant by community. I'll reflect this in the OP.
The logo is looking good. I do have to agree with removing the people in the background. They seem to distract and subtract more from the whole of the logo.
Really, what you should question is why does the Triwizard Drinking Tournament have "Tri"wizards but four houses competing?
Also, to be nerdy, it's Triwizard because in the books it was between three schools, but seeing as it's much easier to dress up like a generic schoolchild rather than the specific uniforms of the other schools in the book, the houses of hogwarts were used for the pub crawl.
That was probably a rhetorical question anyways.
The cookie brigade is awesome, but that is something that goes throughout PAX and isn't a community event. It's an awesome way to donate to Child's Play. The MMT is an annual event that certainly deserves the recognition.
How about we just keep the MMT in the shield because it is an increasingly more popular community event, and then just change the stars to little cookies to represent the cookie brigade?
Aye, I would also say that the Cookie Brigade is a community event if it helps
Speaking of MMT, I've got to figure out what's going on this year... I heard from ZeroHourHero that he wanted to take over MMT East, got to find out what (if any) help he needs from me if he does want to do that. I've got plenty of Cookie Brigade stuff to keep my hands full with currently, eek!
I didn't forget the Cookie Brigade, I just couldn't figure out how to fit it without making it look awkward. The stars are likely to get dropped for adaptations of the design that need to be more compact, and I don't think they'd show up well as cookies. I'm not sure if it might be convenient to have a second thing I could balance against the cookie brigade, similar to how the three trips are arranged. I've had two suggestions to have a cookie rising behind the shield at the top, but I'm concerned that it would be distracting, and not really look like a cookie. I'll make another effort to make it work.
Also, the general opinion asking others is that Assassins, while something that gets coordinated on the forums, is not really a community event. It's something that takes place at many other cons, and the impression I get of it is that it's more... separate. Let me know if this is incorrect.
I'll make some different heraldry adaptations once the basics of the design make a few more people happy. The art will be public domain, otherwise things just get inconvenient for everyone. I'll put it on men and women's shirts, black and colors, once done. Cafepress base prices are a bit annoying, but they're convenient.
If it doesn't fit on the logo that's all good, I just wanted to make sure it was clear that we are a community event! Someone above said that we weren't one... but we're definitely ground floor straight from the forums community run, operated, and conceived. (Yes, we do have an external forum and website, but that's only due to the necessity of needing a place to organize that's not as easy or obvious to reach for our covert operation purposes)
When it comes to being on the logo or not... it'd be neat if there was a place for us, but if there's just no good place to put it that's okay... though if, say, a single star was replaced with even a small and hard to notice cookie, it would be symbolically relevant to the Cookie Brigade (as we are a covert operation... so a covert and non-obvious inclusion in the logo would probably be thematically relevant for us). The cookie in the backround idea, especially if you couldn't tell it was a cookie unless you were paying attention, would probably also be thematically appropriate in truth.
Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is don't worry too much... but if there is a covert spot for our covert cookie operations on the logo, that would be neat.
I haven't forgotten this. I've played with it a bit and wasn't feeling inspired. I'll give it another go on Monday. If I can't get the Cookie Brigade in there, I'll go ahead and mock it up on shirts.
I was trying out the heraldry on shirts, and with the addition of background color, the background crowd and paint splatter was too busy. Here's a more neutral logo with an added ascending cookie.
And here's what it looks like on a background color. The left three shirts are with a grey background burst. The middle two are men and women's with red burst. The right top is men with blue burst, and the right bottom is women's with grey burst (it just didn't look good with blue behind). The design may not ultimately end up being exactly that large on the shirt, it was just a mock-up to determine coloration based on what's available.
Did anyone check about the legality of using a pokeball on it? Everything else is pretty innocuous, but the pokeball sticks out to me as a possible trademark violation, especially if we are going to be purchasing merchandise with the logo attached. I know there was some chatter about it earlier in the thread but I don't think anyone actually checked for sure.
Also, on things like cafepress and other such merch sites, does the poster of a set of merch receive some sort of proceeds from the sale? If so, can we set it up so that all such proceeds are donated to child's play?
Is there a reason the style is not consistent-- jumping from vector to pixel? Or at least--- only having two pixeled icons....either it needs more, a different approach, or the pixels need to be more "refined." I know it represents our old history in gaming-- but it makes the icon less clear as compared to its vectorized counterparts. Just a question to the artist!
Also, the general opinion asking others is that Assassins, while something that gets coordinated on the forums, is not really a community event. It's something that takes place at many other cons, and the impression I get of it is that it's more... separate. Let me know if this is incorrect.
As the organizer for the PAX Assassins games I'd like to say that the majority of our players come from the forum community so I feel we are a community event. While I'd love to have Assassins included in the design I can understand the difficulty in fitting something appropriate into the imagery.
The design looks awesome right now, and I'm sure the finalized piece will be even better. Keep up the great work!
Huge props/congratulations/thanks for all the work that's gone into this!
My thoughts: I miss the people in the background. I'd rather have the people than the starburst. The people ARE the community. And the starburst represents...? Does it represent something, or is it just for looks?
I also really liked the idea of using a martini glass with a Pokeball speared on a lightning bolt where there would normally be an olive. Right now nothing about that quadrant really shows that it's about the pubcrawl/drinking.
Since we're worried about copyright issues with the Pokeball, maybe just a ball that's half red, half white? It still looks Pokeball-ish without being an outright trademarked image.
My thoughts: I miss the people in the background. I'd rather have the people than the starburst. The people ARE the community. And the starburst represents...? Does it represent something, or is it just for looks?
I like the people as well. It might be interesting to see a version of it sans-starburst and with people.
I also really liked the idea of using a martini glass with a Pokeball speared on a lightning bolt where there would normally be an olive. Right now nothing about that quadrant really shows that it's about the pubcrawl/drinking.
This is a really good idea. I'm not sure I saw this before but I definitely like it. The only disadvantage to it is that it might be overly complex for a small part of the image.
Since we're worried about copyright issues with the Pokeball, maybe just a ball that's half red, half white? It still looks Pokeball-ish without being an outright trademarked image.
I think this is the best bet for the Pokeball... really we are all much better off safe than sorry
I actually checked copyright on the pokeball before I even put it in there, but I couldn't find anything conclusive. I will try to rotate the ball 90 degrees so the button is on the side. Then it'll still be a pokeball, without the glaring front-on pokeball look that they always use.
I'll try putting the crowd back, but then I'll have to do more versions specific to each shirt color, as the crowd will otherwise pop out too much. The starburst doesn't presently represent anything. I will try to include a knife or such in the crowd to include the Assassins.
I used a pixel cookie because drawing a vector cookie that looks like a cookie is surprisingly annoying. The pixel cookie somehow still looks like a cookie. Plus, I can probably split it out and the cookie brigade could use it as their badge. I'm open to changing it slightly, if awesome vector cookies are provided.
The pixel food is because it represents gamer food, without the burden of me trying to represent actual food, or worrying about such things like vegetarians or whether it contains a balanced meal. Pixelating the whole design would be too muddy, I think. And somehow, the mix of pixelation didn't bother me in the final design. And, well, someone suggested it.
I'll be out of town, so I'll get this done next week. By request, I'll be sticking it on black as well as fitted ladies tee as well, which will require some white outlining.
Regarding Cafepress, I can set the markup to whatever I wish, but their base prices tend to be high anyway, so I usually don't markup more than about a dollar or two on my other shirts. In this case, I'd keep the markup low, but would still like to cover my yearly store cost ($60). As I stated, I'm perfectly happy providing the design to others, if they want to go through the effort to having it screen printed or such, but normally that requires a large cash outlay up front and taking reservations and all that. This will allow lazy people to pull out their credit cards and get delivery to their door, in a few more colors, styles and sizes than they'd otherwise have to choose from.
I know this has been running for a while, and that I'm a little late to the party. I admire the huge amount of work that's been put in to the coat of arms.
That said, I think it is just too complex for some applications (e.g. small badges, trading cards, etc). Could we perhaps have an alternative logo which would be nice and simple, and suitable for small sizes?
I used a pixel cookie because drawing a vector cookie that looks like a cookie is surprisingly annoying. The pixel cookie somehow still looks like a cookie. Plus, I can probably split it out and the cookie brigade could use it as their badge. I'm open to changing it slightly, if awesome vector cookies are provided.
The pixel food is because it represents gamer food, without the burden of me trying to represent actual food, or worrying about such things like vegetarians or whether it contains a balanced meal. Pixelating the whole design would be too muddy, I think. And somehow, the mix of pixelation didn't bother me in the final design. And, well, someone suggested it.
I think the pixel cookie and food look great. The brigade itself uses a pixel cookie as their logo anyhow so it fits very well. The pixel food definitely gets the gamer food idea across
Regarding Cafepress, I can set the markup to whatever I wish, but their base prices tend to be high anyway, so I usually don't markup more than about a dollar or two on my other shirts. In this case, I'd keep the markup low, but would still like to cover my yearly store cost ($60). As I stated, I'm perfectly happy providing the design to others, if they want to go through the effort to having it screen printed or such, but normally that requires a large cash outlay up front and taking reservations and all that. This will allow lazy people to pull out their credit cards and get delivery to their door, in a few more colors, styles and sizes than they'd otherwise have to choose from.
Yeah I definitely think your time and energy put into this is well worth a few bucks, especially covering any costs you are taking the burden of for having the cafepress store open, etc. When I asked the question I was just saying that after whatever costs that were necessary are covered this would be a fantastic opportunity to raise extra $ for CP.
Could we perhaps have an alternative logo which would be nice and simple, and suitable for small sizes?
Yeah, this had been mentioned before. Having an alternative version of the logo that could be made into sewable "patches" would be ideal, and would probably be very usable on the buttons and cards as well. If I had any talent at all I'd gladly volunteer to help yamhara with that since a ton of work has been done already and we all seem to keep asking for more
My suggestion for the "alt" would be to simply take out any background (starburst or people), take out the stars, dpad, and d20. That would leave basically just the main heraldry with the fancy stuff, the cookie, the animals, and the ribbon.
If you reduce the size down to 200x181 from the linked image, everything is still pretty easy to make out and removing the stuff I listed would probably clean it up enough to be incredibly useful even if very small... or are we talking smaller than that even?
Also, the general opinion asking others is that Assassins, while something that gets coordinated on the forums, is not really a community event. It's something that takes place at many other cons, and the impression I get of it is that it's more... separate. Let me know if this is incorrect.
As the organizer for the PAX Assassins games I'd like to say that the majority of our players come from the forum community so I feel we are a community event. While I'd love to have Assassins included in the design I can understand the difficulty in fitting something appropriate into the imagery.
The design looks awesome right now, and I'm sure the finalized piece will be even better. Keep up the great work!
I think what it comes down to is that as awesome as the Assassins game is within the forum, because it wasn't something that was started and developed in this forum, it isn't a community event in the same way that the Cookie Brigade and Tri-Wizard are.
Also, the general opinion asking others is that Assassins, while something that gets coordinated on the forums, is not really a community event. It's something that takes place at many other cons, and the impression I get of it is that it's more... separate. Let me know if this is incorrect.
As the organizer for the PAX Assassins games I'd like to say that the majority of our players come from the forum community so I feel we are a community event. While I'd love to have Assassins included in the design I can understand the difficulty in fitting something appropriate into the imagery.
The design looks awesome right now, and I'm sure the finalized piece will be even better. Keep up the great work!
I think what it comes down to is that as awesome as the Assassins game is within the forum, because it wasn't something that was started and developed in this forum, it isn't a community event in the same way that the Cookie Brigade and Tri-Wizard are.
You are actually partially wrong in this statement. After playing the game over the years, our feedback and discussion has led to the evolution of the rules and how the game is played.
Jumping into this late, but jumping in regardless:
I like the idea of the logo representing the big events we do every year at PAX (cookie brigade, dinner, MMT, button/cards, whatever), but the style of the current logo is inconsistent enough to where I don't like it. Some places there's smooth vector art, other places blown up pixel art, other places sharp straight lines, other places smooth flowing decorative lines, some places black silhouettes, other places fully illustrated color, etc. It's very "all over the place" and I have a hard time looking at it as a single logo, versus a collection of various things that do not share a consistent visual theme.
Similarly, it's also very busy. There are dice, stars, spikes, silhouettes, d-pads, dice, a horse, a fish... and that's just in the area surrounding the logo itself. I think this could be toned down a little. It's kind of overwhelming.
As a suggestion on how to simplify/unify things, I would point any potential contributors to the West Coast Train Trip/PAXTrain shirts from this year:
This image has many of the same kinds of elements the draft of our logo has (gamepads, game sprites, crosshairs, joysticks, the pac-man board, text, spikey graphics, etc), but the difference here is that the overall style of the piece is consistent. It has kind of a vintage boxing poster or rock and roll poster "feel" to it, even though it incorporates some obvious images that were made elsewhere. The color is uniform across the entire piece and very simple, which helps to unify it. Looking at that picture, it doesn't feel like the elements of it were drawn from several places and copy/pasted in, even though they were. It feels like a single piece.
I really like the idea, and as a rough draft, this is great. It communicates what the logo wants to convey, just not in a polished enough form for it to be a final draft. This strikes me more as a mock-up. I do not think it's finished yet. As always, efforts by anyone are incredible and appreciated to the max.
Arco on
Like this, not like the gas station.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
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Jumping into this late, but jumping in regardless:
I like the idea of the logo representing the big events we do every year at PAX (cookie brigade, dinner, MMT, button/cards, whatever), but the style of the current logo is inconsistent enough to where I don't like it. Some places there's smooth vector art, other places blown up pixel art, other places sharp straight lines, other places smooth flowing decorative lines, some places black silhouettes, other places fully illustrated color, etc. It's very "all over the place" and I have a hard time looking at it as a single logo, versus a collection of various things that do not share a consistent visual theme.
Similarly, it's also very busy. There are dice, stars, spikes, silhouettes, d-pads, dice, a horse, a fish... and that's just in the area surrounding the logo itself. I think this could be toned down a little. It's kind of overwhelming.
As a suggestion on how to simplify/unify things, I would point any potential contributors to the West Coast Train Trip/PAXTrain shirts from this year:
This image has many of the same kinds of elements the draft of our logo has (gamepads, game sprites, crosshairs, joysticks, the pac-man board, text, spikey graphics, etc), but the difference here is that the overall style of the piece is consistent. It has kind of a vintage boxing poster or rock and roll poster "feel" to it, even though it incorporates some obvious images that were made elsewhere. The color is uniform across the entire piece and very simple, which helps to unify it. Looking at that picture, it doesn't feel like the elements of it were drawn from several places and copy/pasted in, even though they were. It feels like a single piece.
I really like the idea, and as a rough draft, this is great. It communicates what the logo wants to convey, just not in a polished enough form for it to be a final draft. This strikes me more as a mock-up. I do not think it's finished yet. As always, efforts by anyone are incredible and appreciated to the max.
I hate to quote this entire post, but I pretty much have to agree with all of it. I think the logo is quite busy myself.
I also wanted to comment that I LOVE those shirts. Really nice job on those.
I picked the latin 'strangers are friends' because of a description I liked (from Caelesto?) that the PAX community was a large welcoming community of strangers who become your friends. But that was too long, so I truncated it. The general consensus on here and IRC seemed to be that other phrases used were for other events or tied to other people (like Wil).
Okay, as the guy who started this thread, I'll recall my "final draft?" label, and maybe we should keep working on it. I'll update the main post and post the update here at the end as well.
So it seems that there is still some unsure thinking behind the "final draft" that we had for a while, so I think it would be better for me to pull the final draft label off and say it needs more work. Luckily, we still have some time before PAX East, where I personally would like to make it a big reveal of sorts.
The main critiques that I have seen are "too busy" and "doesn't include X". I apologize for any comments regarding what is and isn't a community event, especially any I have made. However, I have a feeling that satisfying both of these criticisms would lead to nothing happening. So I am making this an unofficial official thing (with moderator blessing of course):
We need to get a final draft finished that feels simple and can generally be well liked by all. so to allow for any needed printing and shipping needs (for example, the forum badges and so on using the logo), I am setting a deadline of JANUARY 31, 2011 AT 11:59PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. Whatever the consensus is at that point is going to be the final design. If we can all agree on that, it will make things more even.
Overall, I agree with the approach of cleaning and simplifying.
Here would be my notes:
Remove the rococo swirls and the starburst around the shield. They don't seem to serve a purpose, and are out of character with the rest of the artwork.
Keep the horse and salmon, I think they're a great way of referencing the prank.
Remove the inner shield with "PAX Community" words in the centre. They're unreadable at trading card size.
Remove the stars (they don't serve a particular purpose as far as I can tell)
Put the forum address or the words "PAX FORUMS" in the place of the top stars
Would the bar crawl section look better with a single lightning bolt (e.g. the Harry Potter scar) and a single pokeball?
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Also, to be nerdy, it's Triwizard because in the books it was between three schools, but seeing as it's much easier to dress up like a generic schoolchild rather than the specific uniforms of the other schools in the book, the houses of hogwarts were used for the pub crawl.
That was probably a rhetorical question anyways.
The cookie brigade is awesome, but that is something that goes throughout PAX and isn't a community event. It's an awesome way to donate to Child's Play. The MMT is an annual event that certainly deserves the recognition.
"Read twice, post once. It's almost like 'measure twice, cut once' only with reading." - MetaverseNomad
I think you guys (i.e., someone smarter than myself) need to define amongst the group what the term "community" means. Some of us seem to be defining the community as All of the people that attend PAX (and stuff they like), whereas others appear to be associating it with just the forum members and their activities - which is understandable, since this is, according to the thread title, a Forum Logo. Hence why my suggestions for a Deep Crow or cardboard tubes were shot down. Furthermore, based on that definition, things I wouldn't consider to be "community" would include BYOC, the Omegathon, etc - stuff that anybody going to PAX knows about and participates in. I would, however, consider the Cookie Brigade to be "community" - the "regular people" partake of the cookies, sure, but the planning and coordination and execution of the encookification process takes place squarely within the bounds of the Community.
Or just an icon for adventuring around the city and finding cool things about it.
Version one would be our printing version, which would go on anything larger than the forum badge size.
Version two would be our simplified version, which would go on things like the trading cards.
Version three would be our etching version, which would go on things like glass etchings, challenge coins, and other things that don't lend themselves to minute detail work.
As the originator of this post, I think that flatline's definition is closest to what I meant by community. I'll reflect this in the OP.
How about we just keep the MMT in the shield because it is an increasingly more popular community event, and then just change the stars to little cookies to represent the cookie brigade?
Speaking of MMT, I've got to figure out what's going on this year... I heard from ZeroHourHero that he wanted to take over MMT East, got to find out what (if any) help he needs from me if he does want to do that. I've got plenty of Cookie Brigade stuff to keep my hands full with currently, eek!
Also, the general opinion asking others is that Assassins, while something that gets coordinated on the forums, is not really a community event. It's something that takes place at many other cons, and the impression I get of it is that it's more... separate. Let me know if this is incorrect.
I'll make some different heraldry adaptations once the basics of the design make a few more people happy. The art will be public domain, otherwise things just get inconvenient for everyone. I'll put it on men and women's shirts, black and colors, once done. Cafepress base prices are a bit annoying, but they're convenient.
When it comes to being on the logo or not... it'd be neat if there was a place for us, but if there's just no good place to put it that's okay... though if, say, a single star was replaced with even a small and hard to notice cookie, it would be symbolically relevant to the Cookie Brigade (as we are a covert operation... so a covert and non-obvious inclusion in the logo would probably be thematically relevant for us). The cookie in the backround idea, especially if you couldn't tell it was a cookie unless you were paying attention, would probably also be thematically appropriate in truth.
Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is don't worry too much... but if there is a covert spot for our covert cookie operations on the logo, that would be neat.
- Heraldry with logo - draft 3: now with chocolate chips
And here's what it looks like on a background color. The left three shirts are with a grey background burst. The middle two are men and women's with red burst. The right top is men with blue burst, and the right bottom is women's with grey burst (it just didn't look good with blue behind). The design may not ultimately end up being exactly that large on the shirt, it was just a mock-up to determine coloration based on what's available.
- Heraldry on dark shirts
Let me know what you think.
Did anyone check about the legality of using a pokeball on it? Everything else is pretty innocuous, but the pokeball sticks out to me as a possible trademark violation, especially if we are going to be purchasing merchandise with the logo attached. I know there was some chatter about it earlier in the thread but I don't think anyone actually checked for sure.
Also, on things like cafepress and other such merch sites, does the poster of a set of merch receive some sort of proceeds from the sale? If so, can we set it up so that all such proceeds are donated to child's play?
Is there a reason the style is not consistent-- jumping from vector to pixel? Or at least--- only having two pixeled icons....either it needs more, a different approach, or the pixels need to be more "refined." I know it represents our old history in gaming-- but it makes the icon less clear as compared to its vectorized counterparts. Just a question to the artist!
Love it, and many thanks. Looks awesome!
As the organizer for the PAX Assassins games I'd like to say that the majority of our players come from the forum community so I feel we are a community event. While I'd love to have Assassins included in the design I can understand the difficulty in fitting something appropriate into the imagery.
The design looks awesome right now, and I'm sure the finalized piece will be even better. Keep up the great work!
My thoughts: I miss the people in the background. I'd rather have the people than the starburst. The people ARE the community. And the starburst represents...? Does it represent something, or is it just for looks?
I also really liked the idea of using a martini glass with a Pokeball speared on a lightning bolt where there would normally be an olive. Right now nothing about that quadrant really shows that it's about the pubcrawl/drinking.
Since we're worried about copyright issues with the Pokeball, maybe just a ball that's half red, half white? It still looks Pokeball-ish without being an outright trademarked image.
This is a really good idea. I'm not sure I saw this before but I definitely like it. The only disadvantage to it is that it might be overly complex for a small part of the image.
I think this is the best bet for the Pokeball... really we are all much better off safe than sorry
I'll try putting the crowd back, but then I'll have to do more versions specific to each shirt color, as the crowd will otherwise pop out too much. The starburst doesn't presently represent anything. I will try to include a knife or such in the crowd to include the Assassins.
I used a pixel cookie because drawing a vector cookie that looks like a cookie is surprisingly annoying. The pixel cookie somehow still looks like a cookie. Plus, I can probably split it out and the cookie brigade could use it as their badge. I'm open to changing it slightly, if awesome vector cookies are provided.
The pixel food is because it represents gamer food, without the burden of me trying to represent actual food, or worrying about such things like vegetarians or whether it contains a balanced meal. Pixelating the whole design would be too muddy, I think. And somehow, the mix of pixelation didn't bother me in the final design. And, well, someone suggested it.
I'll be out of town, so I'll get this done next week. By request, I'll be sticking it on black as well as fitted ladies tee as well, which will require some white outlining.
Regarding Cafepress, I can set the markup to whatever I wish, but their base prices tend to be high anyway, so I usually don't markup more than about a dollar or two on my other shirts. In this case, I'd keep the markup low, but would still like to cover my yearly store cost ($60). As I stated, I'm perfectly happy providing the design to others, if they want to go through the effort to having it screen printed or such, but normally that requires a large cash outlay up front and taking reservations and all that. This will allow lazy people to pull out their credit cards and get delivery to their door, in a few more colors, styles and sizes than they'd otherwise have to choose from.
Great job, homeslices!!
That said, I think it is just too complex for some applications (e.g. small badges, trading cards, etc). Could we perhaps have an alternative logo which would be nice and simple, and suitable for small sizes?
I think the pixel cookie and food look great. The brigade itself uses a pixel cookie as their logo anyhow so it fits very well. The pixel food definitely gets the gamer food idea across
Yeah I definitely think your time and energy put into this is well worth a few bucks, especially covering any costs you are taking the burden of for having the cafepress store open, etc. When I asked the question I was just saying that after whatever costs that were necessary are covered this would be a fantastic opportunity to raise extra $ for CP.
Yeah, this had been mentioned before. Having an alternative version of the logo that could be made into sewable "patches" would be ideal, and would probably be very usable on the buttons and cards as well. If I had any talent at all I'd gladly volunteer to help yamhara with that since a ton of work has been done already and we all seem to keep asking for more
My suggestion for the "alt" would be to simply take out any background (starburst or people), take out the stars, dpad, and d20. That would leave basically just the main heraldry with the fancy stuff, the cookie, the animals, and the ribbon.
If you reduce the size down to 200x181 from the linked image, everything is still pretty easy to make out and removing the stuff I listed would probably clean it up enough to be incredibly useful even if very small... or are we talking smaller than that even?
I think what it comes down to is that as awesome as the Assassins game is within the forum, because it wasn't something that was started and developed in this forum, it isn't a community event in the same way that the Cookie Brigade and Tri-Wizard are.
You are actually partially wrong in this statement. After playing the game over the years, our feedback and discussion has led to the evolution of the rules and how the game is played.
I like the idea of the logo representing the big events we do every year at PAX (cookie brigade, dinner, MMT, button/cards, whatever), but the style of the current logo is inconsistent enough to where I don't like it. Some places there's smooth vector art, other places blown up pixel art, other places sharp straight lines, other places smooth flowing decorative lines, some places black silhouettes, other places fully illustrated color, etc. It's very "all over the place" and I have a hard time looking at it as a single logo, versus a collection of various things that do not share a consistent visual theme.
Similarly, it's also very busy. There are dice, stars, spikes, silhouettes, d-pads, dice, a horse, a fish... and that's just in the area surrounding the logo itself. I think this could be toned down a little. It's kind of overwhelming.
As a suggestion on how to simplify/unify things, I would point any potential contributors to the West Coast Train Trip/PAXTrain shirts from this year:
This image has many of the same kinds of elements the draft of our logo has (gamepads, game sprites, crosshairs, joysticks, the pac-man board, text, spikey graphics, etc), but the difference here is that the overall style of the piece is consistent. It has kind of a vintage boxing poster or rock and roll poster "feel" to it, even though it incorporates some obvious images that were made elsewhere. The color is uniform across the entire piece and very simple, which helps to unify it. Looking at that picture, it doesn't feel like the elements of it were drawn from several places and copy/pasted in, even though they were. It feels like a single piece.
I really like the idea, and as a rough draft, this is great. It communicates what the logo wants to convey, just not in a polished enough form for it to be a final draft. This strikes me more as a mock-up. I do not think it's finished yet. As always, efforts by anyone are incredible and appreciated to the max.
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I hate to quote this entire post, but I pretty much have to agree with all of it. I think the logo is quite busy myself.
I also wanted to comment that I LOVE those shirts. Really nice job on those.
[ XBL: NemesisFuzz | PSN: Deefuzz ]
Back a few pages ago: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showpost.php?p=16939340&postcount=73
So it seems that there is still some unsure thinking behind the "final draft" that we had for a while, so I think it would be better for me to pull the final draft label off and say it needs more work. Luckily, we still have some time before PAX East, where I personally would like to make it a big reveal of sorts.
The main critiques that I have seen are "too busy" and "doesn't include X". I apologize for any comments regarding what is and isn't a community event, especially any I have made. However, I have a feeling that satisfying both of these criticisms would lead to nothing happening. So I am making this an unofficial official thing (with moderator blessing of course):
We need to get a final draft finished that feels simple and can generally be well liked by all. so to allow for any needed printing and shipping needs (for example, the forum badges and so on using the logo), I am setting a deadline of JANUARY 31, 2011 AT 11:59PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. Whatever the consensus is at that point is going to be the final design. If we can all agree on that, it will make things more even.
Here would be my notes:
Remove the rococo swirls and the starburst around the shield. They don't seem to serve a purpose, and are out of character with the rest of the artwork.
Keep the horse and salmon, I think they're a great way of referencing the prank.
Remove the inner shield with "PAX Community" words in the centre. They're unreadable at trading card size.
Remove the stars (they don't serve a particular purpose as far as I can tell)
Put the forum address or the words "PAX FORUMS" in the place of the top stars
Would the bar crawl section look better with a single lightning bolt (e.g. the Harry Potter scar) and a single pokeball?
Hope those are helpful!