Over on my Behance page you can check out a brief behind-the-scenes look at my logo design process for Mecha-Ude: Mechanical Arms by Yoshino Koyoka. I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, especially because I was able to translate an element from the original Japanese logo design.
Tag: logo design
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“Natsume & Natsume” Announced at AnimeNYC
AnimeNYC ran from November 18-20, 2022, and as my first “full” convention (working all three days) I have to say it went pretty well! A lot of diverse vendors, displays, and cosplayers made for a good time. With a reduced number of admissions, there were a lot of people who missed out on attending, but the trade-off was an easily-navigable showroom floor that only got choked up in a few sections of the hall. That made the overall experience much more manageable for vendors.
On Saturday the 19th, Azuki announced the next title on its manga subscription platform: Natsume & Natsume. I was fortunate enough to design the logo and covers for this series, which is my second title associated with author Shunsuke Sorato (空翔 俊介). The first would be The Girl with the Sanpaku Eyes, on which I’m the main production artist and letterer. While I do handle most of the lettering duties for Sanpaku, I didn’t design the logo; amusingly, I don’t handle any of the lettering duties for Natsume, but I did design the logo. Funny how that turned out.
Anyway, both series feature a protagonist struggling to be understood despite their outward appearance. In Sanpaku Eyes, it’s Amane Mizuno, whose intimidating stare makes her so self-conscious that she can’t talk to her high school crush. In Natsume, it’s Natsume Shiranui who has a plain ol’ scary face. I can’t say too much about how Natsume & Natsume will turn out (seeing as I only handle the covers and not the actual comic) but if’s anything like The Girl with the Sanpaku Eyes, it’ll manage to be inexplicably charming despite the apparently simple slice-of-life premise.
You can preview Natsume & Natsume here. Find out more about The Girl with the Sanpaku Eyes on Denpa’s site.
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Superman’s 75th Anniversary Logo has… Problems
What do you do when you have a little time to think about a trifling thing that you want to complain about? Put it on the internet, of course!
I’m going to keep this critique light-hearted because I’m reviewing a logo for the anniversary of a comic book character. (Think about how high that ranks on people’s “things worth caring about” lists: A review of a logo for a comic book character‘s anniversary. It’d be lucky if it broke the Top 10,000.)
So anyway, Superman is 75 this year, and to commemorate the event DC unveiled a 75th Anniversary logo. That’s all well and good, but look at that thing. LOOK AT IT.
The first thing that came to my mind was “why did they overlap the 7 and the 5?” Presumably it’s to square nicely with the word “years” across the bottom, but that started a new question: why is the cape breaking the frame? My only guess is that it reads better as a cape that way than it does without it, but with Superman’s shoulder being aligned with the word “years” the cape looks like an extraneous design element. Text won’t sit in a nice box when set against that outline! Speaking of boxes, why is there a red box set directly against the blue figure when the colors are the same intensity? Not that I think that someone is going to run this logo in black & white for a letterhead or anything, but there’s no way that box would hold up in a one-color printing job.
What if someone wanted to print it in monochrome anyway, for, let’s say, a letterhead, as I mentioned before? Well, for starters, that outline is not going to reduce well, I can tell you. There are too many small lines that aren’t to scale with the broad, clear lines of the text and the logo. Look at those ripples in the shoulder, caused by the cape. Don’t forget about that hair, too! Superman has sure gotten some spiky hair recently. Maybe it goes better with that pose.
That pose, yes… Superman seems to be looking downward, in a vengeful, brooding manner. Some people seem to appreciate the change, but not me. From the start, Superman was a straight-laced do-gooder with a strong, almost smug sense of justice. Sure, this made him a bit flat as a character, but it’s also part of what makes him a “super” man; he has powers he could easily use to conquer the earth, but he chooses to uphold truth, justice, and general Midwestern U.S. ethics instead. And he’s smug about it. You know who’s vengeful and brooding? Batman. Not Superman. When Superman needs to mull things over, he doesn’t hunch over gargoyles during a midnight thunderstorm, surveying the city for evil and writing sonnets to himself. No, Superman flies thousands of miles to his private fortress (one he built himself, and didn’t inherit from his parents—unlike somebody else I could name) for a little R & R. He doesn’t even project his frustrations onto others! He’s a SUPERMAN, darn it! That’s why the old Fleischer cartoons always showed him standing proudly, arms akimbo, smirking into the stars! Superman is better than you!
OK, so I went off track there. Still, I don’t have much love for the “75” logo. It certainly does what it’s supposed to, but there is a lot of explaining that needs to be done, and a design is a lot like a joke: you shouldn’t have to explain it. If you’re feeling brave, you can check out the comments on Deadline’s coverage of the story, where more than a couple of people share my opinion on the logo.