For this week’s Task I was told we had to redesign the logo for a mobile game called ‘Atomic Bomber’. The original as you can see is a very bright and colourful game, bordering on childish with the rough lines and basic art style.
The first thing I thought was that the art in the original isn’t really relating to the games subject matter. When people talk about atomic bombs, they tend to think about the cold war, which in turns leads to thinking about the conflict between the U.S. and the USSR. Yet I would argue that neither of these associations are shown in the artwork.
So, I knew that I wanted to use a more muted colour pallet in my design in order to create a more adult look. Also, I wanted to use the association with the USSR to help link the game, design and artwork together.
This was the first design I came up with. I had thought that the task was to create a poster for the game however later found out this was not the case. With this design I used a circular gradient as if to show an explosion very far off into the distance. I then added a few branches I drew into the background to give the effect that we are looking at an explosion through a burnt forest.
Next, I drew the shape of the atomic sign, which I then filled yellow as a hint to the USSR flag. I also used the stylize feature in Illustrator to give it a hand drawn effect. Lastly, I used a a pre installed font for the English title. I then turned these letters into an outlined object and stylized these to simulate amore explosions. Finally, I added the Russian translation of the title which I once again turned into an object and stylized.
When I submitted this design, I was quite happy with it. I was the first person to upload their design to the padlet site and thought it would be quite appealing. However, after having compared my design to some of the other students and receiving some very useful feedback from Robert I felt I could do better. I like the use of the gradient, but I don’t think the tree branches are distinctive enough to be obvious as to their intent. Also, I think that the English text and the hand drawn effect on the symbol are too cartoonish for the adult look I was aiming for. Also It was suggested by Robert that if I condensed the design into a logo I would better fulfil the task.
This image was submitted by one of my classmates, and it is one of my favourites from the class. I think I like the choice of the fonts the most, specifically the military stencil for the word ‘Atomic’. I feel like this font links to the time period nicely and would look much nicer in my design than the font I had used.
After my feedback and seeing the other students work, I decided I would redesign my poster to make an icon. I wanted to make a square design so that it would work as an app icon on a mobile phone. For my second design I would link it more to the USSR and the time period.
This is my second and I believe better design. I kept the use of the circular gradient from the original, just changing the colours so instead of it going from white to black, it instead travels from white to soviet red. I really wanted to link this design to the USSR and the time period and so infused that into every level of this design unlike in the first where I left it with just adding the Russian text.
I added a hammer and sickle into the design in order to again, link it back to the USSR and the cold war. I gave this layer a 60% opacity and added a slight blur as I wanted to make this detail subtle. Next, I used the same radiation logo as I had used in the first design however instead of stylizing it to look hand drawn I used a radial blue to give the design a small amount of disruption. I also liked the way the blur almost seemed to blend into the circular gradient.
Next, I added the English text. Using my classmates’ example, I downloaded a military font from Dafont (typodermic fonts, 2005) and used this for the title. I did originally use a military Khaki for the lettering however I found this muddled the design more than I would have liked and so changed this to a bold and clean white. Adding a slight drop shadow to ensure the lettering didn’t get lost in the design.
The final touch was carrying over the Russian lettering used in the original design. The only issue with this is that I didn’t want the design to become cramped and felt like this would have happened if I was not careful. So, I used a different font for the Russian, which proved challenging as there were only a handful in Illustrator that would display a foreign language. Made sure the font size was smaller than the English and moved the lettering behind the nuclear symbol, just enough that the text is still readable. I also set this layer to a 70% opacity to help it not take away from the English title.
Overall, I think the second design is much nicer than the first. I think it less cluttered and much cleaner. Making it a nice logo with plenty of hints at the time period the game is set within. I don’t think the use of the red background is overbearing which I was worried it might be and am very happy with the end result.
Update:
After finishing my redesign, I thought it would be a nice idea to get Luke Allen’s feedback, given how the design would be intended to brand his game. He seemed thrilled to know that something he produced was being discussed in a university course and gave me a bit on insight into his original design.
“my happy-face icon for the full version was sort of trying to evoke the bomb-dropping scene in the movie Dr Stangelove, while being recognizable with the low-res screens of early Android phones. And then when screens got better, I decided to just lean into the pixel-art aesthetic, since Atomic Bomber is basically an old-style arcade game” – Allen,L (2020)
Overall, he seemed to really like my design, he liked the use of the radiation symbol and my use of Cyrillic. His only critiques were that he felt the details of the design might be lost when shrunk down to an app icon size on a phone screen. He also sent me a link to the google app development requirements for an icon. Which I have listed below.
- Final size: 512px x 512px
- Format: 32-bit PNG
- Color space: sRGB
- Max file size: 1024KB
- Shape: Full square – Google Play dynamically handles masking. Radius will be equivalent to 20% of icon size.
- Shadow: None – Google Play dynamically handles shadows. See ‘Shadows’ section below on including shadows within your artwork.
I took his comments on board and tried to make an icon design that fit with the requirements google give developers for its google play store icons. This proved to be quite challenging as the details I had in the design such as the hammer and sickle as well as the Russian lettering became unreadable when shrunk to the tiny requirements. The end result of meeting this task was an even simpler design which while I do not like as much as the larger variant does retain its legibility when shrunk down to size.
References:
Atomic Bomber Icon Redesign [Email].Message sent to F.Ibbotson. 28th October 2020, 06:47.
Luke Allen (2010) Atomic Bomber [Video Game]. available on IOS & PlayStore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.lukeallen.bomber&hl=en_GB&gl=US
Typodermic Fonts (2005) Font, Dafont, Available online: https://www.dafont.com/gunplay.font [Accessed 22/10/2020]