Today I’d like to talk about the logo for King of RPGs, which was designed by Eric Adams. Eric (hi Eric!) came recommended by a friend, as I wanted someone to work on the logo who was familiar with Illustrator, rather than having Victor or myself learn it in a short amount of time.
My original idea for the logo — and the title of the series itself — was to do a parody of a certain manga series with the kanji “Oh” (king) in the title. The “Oh” kanji (it’s at the bottom of this post) is one of the simplest and most recognizable kanji, and I thought it would go well with the tone of the series — the title “King of RPGs” is itself a parody of the common “king of –” titles which appear in shonen manga (Prince of Tennis, Shaman King, Adventure King Beet (the original Japanese title of Beet the Vandel Buster), etc.). However, the publisher felt that having Japanese text in the logo would be too confusing to American readers, so we decided to go with the simpler English title “King of RPGs.” Eric ran with this and started working on a few designs, working with the theme of over-the-top melodrama. (All logo designs are by Eric Adams.)
This design, if finished, would have had a sort of metallic, heavy-metal Gothic, “Doom” look. It was an interesting design, but I thought it was a little heavy and also too big vertically — it would take up a lot of space on the cover.
At this point I asked Eric to consider some other design concepts, parodying some super-retro ’80s Dungeons & Dragons cover artwork by Erol Otus. (I admire his primary-colored psychedelic grunge aesthetic.) However, Eric felt that the “Deities & Demigods” font was too circus-like and didn’t have enough impact, and the classic “Dungeons & Dragons” logo font was too ornate and hard to read. I couldn’t disagree there, so I gave up on the “Deities & Demigods” parody and Eric continued coming up with logo designs.
The lime green color could have been changed, but now *I* thought this tilted, softened logo had too much of a funhouse look. I wanted something a little heavier.
Now this is more like it. It’s very basic, though, and still needs something.
Aha! This is it. Eric added some hexagonal map-patterns in the background, finishing the logo. There was some debate over whether the hexagons were distracting or would simply get lost in the color — they aren’t always noticeable at first glance — but I thought it looked good. I still think that hexagons say “wargames” more than “roleplaying games” (most RPGs I’ve played use square grids, if they use maps and miniatures at all) but hexagons look a lot better inside the letters than square grids do. And ta-da it’s the King of RPGs logo!
But I couldn’t resist, so I asked Eric to make a vector version of my original idea for the logo — “RPG-OH,” aka “King of RPGs.” Behold its splendor. This alternate logo will probably appear on minicomics and other “side stories” or “gaiden” stories which take place within the King of RPGs universe. As for what’s in that universe… (checks his calendar to see how many days it is until January 19)…
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
