NineDev.net

I was shooting for something that resembled an abstract version of a "G".. very flowy, curvy.. almost not a G at all. Throwing another plain "G" into a circle didn't sit well with me but I have to recognize the history of it. I can see what you are saying though.

I wanted the text "gamedev.net" to be bigger and more clear so I went with droid sans and increased the height of the font.

Yeah, not a big fan of the change. Granted the old 'G' is getting borderline antique, but this is a little too abstract -- If you took away the text, I'd have never made the assiciation, even with the familiar blue circle, and I've been here probably nearly as long as anyone. It's too loose, what's it suppose to be? Is it a '9'? a sloppy 'S'? An upside-down 5?

Yeah, not a big fan of the change. Granted the old 'G' is getting borderline antique, but this is a little too abstract -- If you took away the text, I'd have never made the assiciation, even with the familiar blue circle, and I've been here probably nearly as long as anyone. It's too loose, what's it suppose to be? Is it a '9'? a sloppy 'S'? An upside-down 5?

The letter "G"

For fun, maybe you should change the text and banners to say, "NineDev.net".

The "G" does look like something between a "9" and a Dothraki sword. :P

Changing topic from the shape of the glyph... The range of colours gave the old icon a lot more depth as well. It had shadows as well as highlights, using a range of blues, and also a more complex shape to the background gradient rather than a straight bar. It's a subtle difference, but IMO it made the old one look a lot more professional.

Changing topic from the shape of the glyph... The range of colours gave the old icon a lot more depth as well. It had shadows as well as highlights, using a range of blues, and also a more complex shape to the background gradient rather than a straight bar. It's a subtle difference, but IMO it made the old one look a lot more professional.

The web 2.0 shiny button effect?

[attachment=14060:gamedevlogo2013.png]

vs

[attachment=14056:GDNet-G-rendered.png]

Personally, I prefer the second one.

GDNet-G-rendered.png

Yeah having both enlarged side-by-side, the difference is that generic "shiny button effect"

When I wrote the last post, I was going by memory and didn't even remember that the old logo did use this effect though, I just noticed that there wasn't shadow/midtone/highlight any more, only midtone/highlight -- that's the actual issue I meant to raise.

The shiny button effect itself isn't necessary, but to break down what it does in the old logo -- the "half moon" section at the bottom of the circle becomes the shadow part, with the rest of the circle being the mid-tone, then a circular highlight is applied over both. It's not that particular configuration of shapes that I remembered, just the fact that it used a palette of 3 colours in the effect.

Even the outer ring of the old one has a shadow at the bottom right to add some depth by contrasting against the brighter top half of the centre circle.

There's also a subtle hue change between the two logos (the new one is much more green/teal than the old one), and the choice to have the glyph cut through the outer ring.

[edit] Also, the new one's centre circle isn't exactly centred, with the width of the white void differing in places, and the circles aren't anti-aliased as well (in both high and low res this is noticeable).

Hooray for paint program presets. Put beside the white site border and in the dark blue square makes it look all smeared and washed out.

The look of the site continues to decline to that one of those fly-by-night parked domains.

I've dropped all shading from the logo.. it's blue and white now. More modern logo designs don't have much in the line of shading anyway.

Hooray for paint program presets. Put beside the white site border and in the dark blue square makes it look all smeared and washed out.

The look of the site continues to decline to that one of those fly-by-night parked domains.

Heh.. point me towards the parked domain page you are reminded of.

I didn't realize playing with the site logo was a thing we could do.

[attachment=14061:BevelWhiteWDropShadowWCloudWBorder.jpg][attachment=14062:BevelWhiteWDropShadowWEtchedWBorder.jpg]

I bet giving it to an actual artist instead of a programmer-art gimp user could give some amazing results.

Ah, the current iteration is much better, the extra crossbar is exactly what it needed. I like it overall, although to me it still looks a little washed out, like the background of the G needs to be slightly darker.

Also, I made the mistake of getting bored and having Photoshop open (and reading frob's post, Attack of the Difference Clouds), so I have an absurd amount of logo ideas I need to drop somewhere...

1. [attachment=14073:GDnetLogo1.png]

2. [attachment=14072:GDnetLogo2.png]

3. [attachment=14071:GDnetLogo3.png]

4. [attachment=14070:GDnetLogo4.png]

5. [attachment=14069:GDnetLogo5.png]

6. [attachment=14068:GDnetLogo6.png]

7. [attachment=14067:GDnetLogo7.png]

8. [attachment=14066:GDnetLogo8.png]

9. [attachment=14065:GDnetLogo9.png]

^ That's pretty nifty. I like the textures and shading, my personal favs are number 3 and 8.

I'm not a fan of the new design changes either. The logo looks bland and the typography isn't in balance with the rest of the site.

Michael, we've got many professional designers on this forum. Why don't you hire one of them if you want to give the website an overhaul?
Or, if the budget's tight, at least start a competition for things like logos and stuff, winner gets lifetime GDNet+ membership or something.

Cheers,
Moritz

^ That's pretty nifty. I like the textures and shading, my personal favs are number 3 and 8.

I'm not a fan of the new design changes either. The logo looks bland and the typography isn't in balance with the rest of the site.

Michael, we've got many professional designers on this forum. Why don't you hire one of them if you want to give the website an overhaul?
Or, if the budget's tight, at least start a competition for things like logos and stuff, winner gets lifetime GDNet+ membership or something.

Cheers,
Moritz

Well we don't really have a budget to hire a designer.. we have enough of a budget to keep the site running. I'm after something that no longer is a traditional "G", retains the blue circle, and doesn't contain any textures or shiny button look.. basically I'm looking for minimalism in the design of the circular part of the logo that also doesn't overtly look like just a big plain "G" in a circle like we've had the last 13 years.

Of Prinz's #1 looks closest to what I'm talking about in terms of minimalism and possibly even abstraction of the "G". Believe it or not, the G in the logo from the first post is also professionally designed typography for a capital "G".

I don't want to mislead you guys with the idea that the logo is an open project though. At this point in time 100% of my energy is going into both writing articles/tutorials and creating everything that is going to be needed to facilitate that for others. When we open up the article section again I'm going to begin changing the overall look of the site to incorporate more tutorials.

See here:

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/639725-article-inspiration/

@Prinz Eugn: Awesome stuff! I like all of them, but I personally think #8 is too... EA. Anyway, I really like them.

To put a spin (pun not intended, but now that I see it, I intend it) on some of it, what if the G was rotated to be a standby button? Here's a few examples:

[attachment=14075:GDnetLogo1.png]

[attachment=14076:GDnetLogo2.png]

[attachment=14077:GDnetLogo3.png]

Of course, all I did was rotate these. A proper "standby button/G" logo would have to be manually made to make it look super awesome...

Edit: alternatively, you could do an actual standby button, but rotated to be a G (of course, it might need to be stylized a bit more to make it look like a G):

[attachment=14078:IEC5009_Standby_Symbol.svg.png]

I'd play around with these ideas in Inkscape but I've got a DE test I need to take...

Edit edit: Also, the current logo looks much better than than the first "9" logo. But I like some of Prinz Eugn's variants a lot.

Also, I think favicon.ico needs to be updated...

I didn't realize playing with the site logo was a thing we could do.

BevelWhiteWDropShadowWCloudWBorder.jpgBevelWhiteWDropShadowWEtchedWBorder.jpg

I bet giving it to an actual artist instead of a programmer-art gimp user could give some amazing results.

Those are really good!

For what it's worth, the version currently up on the main page solves the recognition problems with the first attempt. Opening up the circle and the little 'crossbar' makes all the difference.

A logo contest would be fun... but as Michael says, there's bigger fish to fry for the site. My logos were just a fun exercise in Photoshop, and I think Michael fixed the biggest problem with the new logo- it was just a little to abstract to be recognized as the letter "G" if it weren't next to Gamedev.net, and it sounds like people were still confused.

I think the logo still needs a little adjustment, either to be bigger so the G can stand on it's own or add more detail to the background. I think the no-gradient/texture style only works well when the logo is pretty big. I tried adding detail to using the the current G, just to see what would happen, and also tried a skinner version:

10. [attachment=14093:GDnetLogo10.png]

11. [attachment=14092:GDnetLogo11.png]

12. [attachment=14091:GDnetLogo12.png]

13. [attachment=14090:GDnetLogo13.png]

Okay, I need to start drafting that article now...