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JosefNemec / Playnite

Video game library manager with support for wide range of 3rd party libraries and game emulation support, providing one unified interface for your games.
https://playnite.link
MIT License
9.44k stars 504 forks source link

New logo and branding #1693

Open joaobborges opened 4 years ago

joaobborges commented 4 years ago

Describe the solution you'd like Design a beautiful logo that doesn't feel so generic :)

comradekingu commented 4 years ago

How about an old style joystick in the form of something that looks like a lamppost with round light source?

ArtexJay commented 4 years ago

image

I made this for myself, I have two designs I prefer this one. I tried to do something close to the new MS fluent icon style but ended up with this lol.

comradekingu commented 4 years ago

To illustrate an idea. image image

Only have a trackpad available, so a better attempt will have to be made later on or by others :)

Was thinking more head on, or upwards, but didn't see any such images.

Bluscream commented 4 years ago

Wtf is that thing? Looks like a abomination of Sirenhead

shangles commented 4 years ago

Agreed. None of these are better than the original logo. They aren't made using vector-based illustration software and won't translate to print or any other media well.

comradekingu commented 4 years ago

@shanges @Bluescream The idea is to have the top of the joystick look like a lit lamppost. Thereby the "night" is incorporated into the "play" of Playnite. From that it is easier to simplify rather than arrive at some idea by refining a generic concept.

JosefNemec commented 4 years ago

nite in Playnite is for unite. Playnite name is a combination of play and unite.

darklinkpower commented 4 years ago

I think this is better left to someone who does graphic design. The only issue isn't the making of the logo itself in a software designed for it, but the difficult part is coming with a good concept and creative process to make a good logo. I agree that the current logo feels generic but not just because of that it should be replaced for anything that doesn't have quality.

comradekingu commented 4 years ago

@JosefNemec A play-night, like a play-date or game-night isn't a solitary event either. @darklinkpower Contrary to the skills on display for the mockup shown earlier, I actually do some graphic design. ;) https://www.flickr.com/photos/neilg24/4018550872 is a very iconic lamp-post, and it has a rounder shape. I suppose the width of the pillar lends itself more to arcade style joysticks.

darklinkpower commented 4 years ago

Personally I think your concept is far from a good idea for a logo for Playnite. To name a few reasons:

  1. You are talking about joysticks when Playnite doesn't focus exactly on retro games and emulator support is still missing important features as seen in #653. Defining the Playnite focusing in one aspect of gaming is a terrible idea in my opinion, specially as @JosefNemec has said that the concept behing "Playnite" is "unite". The concepts used for the name shouldn't be ignored. A joystick-like icon could probably go with other projects like RetroPie, Launchbox or RetroArch for example.
  2. A joystick feels extremely generic and doesn't have a personality or can be instantly recognizable to one thing, which would fall in the same "generic" category as the controller, which would make the change pointless
  3. Since it's been just ideas, I don't know if this would apply but it would be important to see how would be the type of logo: Minimalistic, logo+typography, lettermarks, emblems, etc. And then there's the visual style of the logo, which is a huge subject.

If you have education in design or art, I'm sure you'll be able to come with other ideas easily but I think it would be a good idea to put here semi-finished logos because in abstract it is difficult to value them. But that's just my input as a Playnite user, the final word falls of course in @JosefNemec as the Playnite developer.

shakeyourbunny commented 4 years ago

I'd like to add, that the main platform for games is the PC. On the PC, the main gaming input device never has been gamepads nor joysticks (except flight or space simulators), but mouse and keyboard. The current logo design is imho ok, because it symbolizes a XBOX gamepad which most people have or something similar which has XInput.

I understand that there is a certain userbase that use Playnite primarily as a unifying frontend for console emulation (and to a lesser degree, computer emulation), but as @darklinkpower mentionend (and the very first thing you see on https://playnite.link) that Playnite is not focused on that, but a neutral unifying platform for all of your games. This also includes PC gaming in its various forms (including traditional gaming without any digital libraries (CDROMs etc)). If you insist on only having such thing, I suggest using something other more specialized, like RetroArch, Emulation Station or something similar.

I think that the current logo design is good enough for that, but the ultimate decision to update the branding is on @JosefNemec .

shakeyourbunny commented 4 years ago

Oh and your proposed joystick design just looks like the Commodore 64 Direct-to-TV (C64 DTV). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV

comradekingu commented 4 years ago

It is an idea, not a proposal. I just searched for AMIGA controller and overlaid it on some other image. Trying to think of something visual around "unite". That connection hinges on already knowing "nite" is not "night" though.

ArtexJay commented 4 years ago

Agreed. None of these are better than the original logo. They aren't made using vector-based illustration software and won't translate to print or any other media well.

I can do it as a vector based just fine, but it's faster for me to whip up something in photoshop quickly especially if it's concept. of course I'm biased but I rather like my the idea I posted.

ArtexJay commented 4 years ago

Personally I think your concept is far from a good idea for a logo for Playnite. To name a few reasons:

  1. You are talking about joysticks when Playnite doesn't focus exactly on retro games and emulator support is still missing important features as seen in #653. Defining the Playnite focusing in one aspect of gaming is a terrible idea in my opinion, specially as @JosefNemec has said that the concept behing "Playnite" is "unite". The concepts used for the name shouldn't be ignored. A joystick-like icon could probably go with other projects like RetroPie, Launchbox or RetroArch for example.
  2. A joystick feels extremely generic and doesn't have a personality or can be instantly recognizable to one thing, which would fall in the same "generic" category as the controller, which would make the change pointless
  3. Since it's been just ideas, I don't know if this would apply but it would be important to see how would be the type of logo: Minimalistic, logo+typography, lettermarks, emblems, etc. And then there's the visual style of the logo, which is a huge subject.

If you have education in design or art, I'm sure you'll be able to come with other ideas easily but I think it would be a good idea to put here semi-finished logos because in abstract it is difficult to value them. But that's just my input as a Playnite user, the final word falls of course in @JosefNemec as the Playnite developer.

This is something i had in mind, two hands over each other forming a gamepad something like this. Did this one as a concept to see if this would be closer to the unite mixed with play. image

shakeyourbunny commented 4 years ago

This looks like a symbol for a Nintendo thing, not a PC or an application icon for an emulator frontend, not something what Playnite is.

shakeyourbunny commented 4 years ago

I put together a quick drawing which IMHO suits Playnite much better for the motif of "unity" "gaming" and PC.

playnite-unity-logo1

Alternative:

playnite-unity-logo2

Although I think that the current logo is fine though, but may be a bit better if it has a slight drop shadow and the edges are closed with a tiny black border.

shakeyourbunny commented 4 years ago

I'd really like to add more out of the box supported libraries (like itch.io, Amazon/Twitch Prime, HumbleBundle), but this will be cluttered with undecipherable pixels and the Battle.net logo shoulda be black/white too, but could not edit the logo properly.

If someone has interest building on this, I'd happily provide the .svg version of both.

shakeyourbunny commented 4 years ago

I'm not an graphics artist, but to sell the notion of "unity", some ideas:

darklinkpower commented 4 years ago

A logo definitely shouldn't be so busy and definitely shouldn't use other logos as part of its logo. This task should be better left for a graphic designer. Graphic design is more difficult than what it appears (And it's a profession on its own), there are a lot of things involved in the creative process and it's not just a matter of making the product in a software. There's no rush in changing the logo, the current one woks fine enough and the change (in my opinion) should only be made when there's a professional quality logo done by a graphic designer. My career is design oriented and I could try giving it a go, but even then I doubt a lot that my proposals would have the quality of a something done by a professional graphic designer.

Maybe there could be a small announcement in Playnite 8 release about this to potentially grab interest and see if someone can contribute.

shakeyourbunny commented 4 years ago

@darklinkpower I wholeheartly agree to your answer, my proposition has more the reason to get people off the emulator joypad train and nudge them more to the vision @JosefNemec has, as I clearly am not an graphics artist ;)

An united PC gaming motif is something more than drawing a controller, most "unity" motifs in the wilds are focused on some parts circling something other in the center. I tried to combine the various libraries or input methods with a PC in the middle, but this should be more abstract, but noticeably easy to remember is very hard to design imho.

JosefNemec commented 4 years ago

Here are my thoughts:

I don't think it's worth making just a new logo. Playnite could use complete branding overhaul, including new website, possibly also refresh of default application theme. Also, ideally tied to some major update release.

Bluscream commented 4 years ago

image

felixkmh commented 3 years ago

I experimented with some logo/icon ideas while working on a theme. The idea was to somehow incorporate the "play triangle": grafik