Is Vintage Story intentionally obscure?

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

As a developer I look at that logo and think, that's going to be a nightmare to replicate properly across all devices or even in print.

As an artist, I have to side more with @ifoz here. While the hand-drawn look and detail of the logo isn't typical of a lot of modern design...that's also what helps the design stand out from competition. There's nothing wrong with sleek, extremely simple logos but when those designs are what's everywhere then it's going to be the old-timey ultra-detailed illustration that stands out. It would be the opposite if the common design trend was old-fashioned overly detailed art--the simple vector designs would stand out simply because they're so different.

 

2 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

As a designer (admittedly not a good one) I look at the font and I'm a little sick in my mouth.

The title font is mostly fine, in my opinion. The colors go together quite well. The only thing I'd be inclined to tweak is the little notches at the ends of the lettering; the font is supposed to mimic quill writing or old fountain pens, perhaps, but I don't recall those tools producing little notches in the lettering like that. It's not a big flaw, but I think it might be just enough to make things look a bit off.

[Broccoli Clock]

20 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

As an artist, I have to side more with @ifoz here. While the hand-drawn look and detail of the logo isn't typical of a lot of modern design...that's also what helps the design stand out from competition. There's nothing wrong with sleek, extremely simple logos but when those designs are what's everywhere then it's going to be the old-timey ultra-detailed illustration that stands out. It would be the opposite if the common design trend was old-fashioned overly detailed art--the simple vector designs would stand out simply because they're so different.

The title font is mostly fine, in my opinion. The colors go together quite well. The only thing I'd be inclined to tweak is the little notches at the ends of the lettering; the font is supposed to mimic quill writing or old fountain pens, perhaps, but I don't recall those tools producing little notches in the lettering like that. It's not a big flaw, but I think it might be just enough to make things look a bit off.

Again, this is all opinion, but for me any logo that has transparency around the edges is (in general) a problem when scaling, printing, etc. Being an artist I'm sure you'll have encountered the issue. I am specifically talking the foliage of the tree, here.

As for the font, it's like 1970s typography has a love child with 1990s MS word art.

I'm not calling for it to change, just commenting I find it quite offputting. 

Edited 7 hours ago by Broccoli Clock

[LadyWYT]

4 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Again, this is all opinion, but for me any logo that has transparency around the edges is (in general) a problem when scaling, printing, etc. Being an artist I'm sure you'll have encountered the issue. I am specifically talking the foliage of the tree, here.

I can't really recall transparency being an issue when scaling an image. What tends to be more of a problem is pixels versus vectors. I'm probably butchering the terminology here, but basically, vector art utilizes smooth curves, so it's easy to resize the image without losing image quality in the process. A rasterized image--that is, one made out of pixels--can be shrunk much easier than it can be made larger. Shrinking a rasterized image is usually easier to do since the software is just removing pixels from the image to make it smaller, which makes it a bit easier to preserve design quality(not really an issue though, since small images prioritize saving space so preserving detail isn't a priority). When making a rasterized image larger though, the software is adding more pixels to the original image so it makes its best guess on where to put them based on what's already there, hence why image quality suffers more the larger you try to make the original design(ie, it gets really pixelated, really fast).

There's also stuff like image dpi(dots per inch), which is basically just how many pixels an image has per inch of image--if I'm recalling correctly, the standard for print is 300 dpi, but it's also been quite a while since art school.

With the logo itself, I don't think it's the edge transparency that is a problem, as much as it is perhaps the lack of a defining outline. The colors the logo uses are similar to the background coloring of the menu, so some of the details start blending in as a result. A dark colored outline around the logo would make it much easier for the eye to tell where the logo ends and the background begins.

[LadyWYT]

18 minutes ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I'm not calling for it to change, just commenting I find it quite offputting. 

Fair enough, but I do like examining designs.  Plus it's fun trying to reason why a design might be off-putting to some.

[Broccoli Clock]

11 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I'm probably butchering the terminology here..

Nah, you are right, the two main formats are bitmap or vector. While screen dpi tends to be 96 with print being 300. There is a slight difference in that print medium will use the CMYK colour model, while the screen is limited to RGB, and finally the way in which transparencies are handled is slightly different.

14 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Plus it's fun trying to reason why a design might be off-putting to some.

Do I think that's the reason VS is "not as popular as we'd like"? No, I think it will have some effect, you only get one chance to make a good first impression after all, but if the logo is stopping that person from buying the game then there is more to it than just preference. If it came to a toss up between spending money on game A or B, and it's pretty close, you could argue a logo may tip things in a certain direction, but again.. if that's the case, there's more to it than that.