Vintage Story Cover Art Rebrand

[OreEnthusiast]

New one from an art perspective is better but from a design perspective looks bad to me. It's all metal and steam punk technology, completely missing representation of the primitive survival and primitive technology that make up the core gameplay experience. Looks like something you'd use for a magi-tech mod pack for Memecraft instead of VS. 

I'd suggest filling the scene with stuff like barrels, a clay oven, firewood, a hanging bucket, a lantern, a prospecting pick, a chisel, basically some combination of copper to iron age items that're iconic within the game and noticeably stand out compared to items within other block games. Something that says "This is what you will find in VS"

I like the addition of the mushrooms within the scene for that reason. You could further expand on that with tree resin and a tree mushroom as well. 

[TheCatfreaky]

I really like the look of the reworked one. HOWEVER I think it doesn't really fit the serious and party dark vibes the game has (for me).

In general like that you want to update the logo (even though I do enjoy the original). 
What I do prefer about this reworked one is that it has more definition. 

EDIT: If I could I would vote "another reworked version", because it's not because I am super attached to the old one but really support the idea of an updated one. 

Edited April 24 by TheCatfreaky

[1Zuras1]

I don’t like the new logo that much, because its cartoonish look reminds me too strongly of a Minecraft modpack icon you’d just download quickly from CurseForge.

The world of Vintage Story is dark and dangerous, not as colorful and inviting as similar games.
That’s why I would lean more toward a slightly more rustic look for the logo.
Yeah, it's AI generated. Yeah i know, not everyone is a fan of it and i am no artist but we are here for some ideas, right? Right?

 

Edited April 24 by 1Zuras1

[Teh Pizza Lady]

I voted for the new logo but only because I like the clarified shading and because I think it's important for a game's logo to be consistent with the art style of the game itself. You wouldn't expect a game like CyberPunk to have a watercolor logo or something like Apex Legends to have balloon art. Usually the game's logo is taking from something visually striking from the game itself that is easily recognizable and people can point to it and say "Yes, that's Vintage Story."

 

What the old logo does right:

Simplicity in design.
The original logo understands restraint. The tree, the floating island, the clock. That’s the identity. It doesn’t try to over-explain itself, and it doesn’t need to. The larger shapes do the heavy lifting, while the finer details are implied rather than forced. It leaves mystery and allows the player to discover that there is more than what is apparent from the surface.

Separation of the text from the logo.
The tree is the logo. The text is the brand. They are treated as separate elements, which gives both room to breathe. Nothing is fighting for attention, and the viewer can process the image cleanly.

Thematic consistency.
Everything points back to the tree. The greens and browns are cohesive, and the gears are understated. They exist just enough to create curiosity without pulling focus. The logo knows what it’s about and doesn’t drift from it. Even the colors of the text match the colors of the logo, giving them a visually jarring look that draws attention to them in just the right way that leaves the viewer slightly unsettled. Not so much that they look away, but just enough that they look at it and think "Something isn't quite right here", which lends more to the game than you might realize.

 

What the new logo does right:

Deeper contrast.
The new design introduces stronger light and shadow. The added contrast in the canopy and the darker underside of the island give the image actual depth instead of letting it sit flat. It reads faster and more clearly because of it and draws the eye to the image as a whole.

More defined shading.
Lighting feels intentional instead of evenly spread. The tree is broken into readable forms, highlights and shadowed masses, which gives it structure and makes the whole piece feel more grounded in realism which is a whole thematic element of the game itself.

A stronger, fuller tree.
This is where the new design carries the most weight. The added branches and the expanded canopy give the tree presence. It feels older, healthier, and more established. The silhouette is bigger, clearer, and more recognizable. The tree is the anchor of the whole design.

Improved silhouette clarity.
The overall shape of the tree and island reads much more cleanly. You can recognize it at a glance without needing to rely on internal detail, which is exactly what a strong logo should do. You could lose half the details of the logo with the clockwork, steampunk machinery and condense it down to just what is in the first image without losing ANY details in what the image represents.

Better depth in the base.
The underside of the island and the gears have more separation and shadow, which helps sell the idea that this is a layered object rather than a flat cutout. The visual depth is more pleasing to the eye.

 

What could work better:

Not a complete redesign, but a visual clarification of original logo. Same identity, same tone, same intent.

What a proper logo needs to do is:

• Keep the visual clarity of the old logo
• Add the depth and contrast of the new logo
• Keep the updated tree so it actually carries visual weight
• Keep the simplicity so it feels intentional instead of overloaded

As it stands, the new logo appears, visually, more playful than grounded, which makes it feel closer to something aimed at a younger audience. That’s a noticeable shift from the creator’s description of Vintage Story as being like The Other Block Game, "but for adults."

Edited April 24 by Teh Pizza Lady
text size was weird... idk why. fixed it

[Aresydatch]

I think that the new logo looks too detailed for a Logo and isn't able to be simplified much into just a tree and cogs

[DishonoredHero 2]

I personally prefer the newer version with the caveat that I would prefer if it was a little less "busy" overall since all the mechanical parts surrounding the tree are a little excessive.

[HazelnutButter]

I like the new one but as some other people have said, I cannot recall who said it at the moment, it doesnt fit the same aesthetic the old one did. If possible making remaking the new logo with the muted colors and painterly style might take it further. 

 

I also liked @Nicodemus suggestion of the icon rather than being a logo, having it something a bit more simpler, easy to read as vintage story ,and still very iconic. Maybe considering having a new main logo along with a new icon could be in order.

I cant recall who else showed it but it does look out of place on the opening screen, which circles back to mayne see what you can do about combining the old and new concept.

 

I adore the composition and shapes of the new one though so I'll be voting for that for this reason.

[HuskyTemple]

I really love how the new one looks, but only out of context of vintage story.

It's beautiful artwork, but it feels wrong for vintage story itself. The original logo feels dark and mysterious, and I feel like it really reflects the game experience and themes. I like the pops of color in the new one, and feel like it would lend itself well to explaining that vintage story isn't all crazy doom and gloom, but I think small bits of color could easily be added into the original one.

I definitely DO NOT think anything related to the themes of the new one should be added in game. At all. 

I feel like that logo style and subsequent artwork or in game features would fit more for a game like hytale or something more at base light at fun (in vibes, I love vintage story with my whole heart, but part of that is getting murdered in a dark hole from a groaning monster you didn't know was added to the game and almost having a heart attack)

[TheOtherBarbies]

7 hours ago, MattyK said:

Honestly, I like the more painterly style of the original logo as it has the more earthy and gritty tones of the game, if you could incorporate that style into the new logo I think it'd be a good fit, but currently it feels just a teensy bit out of place.

Yeah, making it more "blocky" also made it more cartoony. Probably partly to do with the vibrancy of the colors. But also some of the other styling.

[MischievousCloud]

I think neither fit the vibe of this game. The current ones dull pallette feels better, but the new ones more vibrant blocky textures feels like a step in the right direction. I think there is too much tech going on in the new one, and the tree and clock feels out of place, no trees look like that in game. In all my time playing this game, I have barely been able to touch tech as much as the logo indicates its in the game. 

If I were to redesign, I would take the color palette of the first, for the standard look(everything minus the tech pieces) as my base. Then I would do away with the tech and pipes on the tree, and flip the gears to act as a background like when the temporal storms hit, dave in the background. Maybe keeping tech and pipes underneath the tree, and giving a bit more earth layers, with hidden tech and monsters below. Also one of the gears should be a temporal gear.

The vibe it needs is eerie. yet playful.

All in all a step in the right direction so far, but far from complete in my honest opinion. Love the game, keep up the fantastic work!

[Warthog02]

The Original fits the vintage story theme far better, like others have said the New one looks too over saturated, modern, and corporate. The Original is something I'd proudly wear on a T-shirt or a hoodie every day, the new logo while fine, looks like something out of contemporary minecraft and more geared toward children. One of the biggest appeals of Vintage Story to me is the more down to earth feel, where everything you make is done by hand and takes time. The Original perfectly reflects this, appearing hand painted and like a real person took time to make it. I don't doubt that the new design took time, but it resembles too much the omnipresent AI "art" that plagues real artists, in a game that celebrates real art and real effort.

[Lodeclaw]

Clearly a new logo is needed, but the reworked logo presented in this thread does not at all evoke the style or feeling of Vintage Story. As others have said, it looks like a modpack logo for Minecraft. It needs to look vintage; it should not look new, it should look tarnished.

[TrueNightmare]

I quite like the look of it, I think yes, the current does need updating but I am not sure if the new one fully fits the feel of the game, the old one did a better job with is colour palette. I think there also needs to be more vintage story in the logo, a shiny ore in the stone, some broken ruins on the ground, maybe a lotus in the tree or make the tree partly rusted?

I do think you should dim for 2 however, a large one for art reasons like this but a much smaller one, I was a comment mention a cog which fits very well with the game and I could see being used for the icons and even discord channel. think of it like minecraft, the icon is the standard grass block and everyone knows that is the feel of minecraft which is how I feel vintage story's logo should be.

[BluntTongs]

A lot of comments I've read here point out how the original logo feels more organic, and I have to echo that. I really like the painterly, less saturated kind of style and how there aren't any solid outlines for any of the elements and I consider it iconic. It also looks great scaled down! I wouldn't mind the new logo so much but it feels a lot more complicated and cluttered than it needs to be and de-emphasizes the dominant 'nature' aspect of the game by cluttering the base of the tree with assorted steamwork bits. The original was more subtle about the mechanical parts and just had the silhouetted gears below the earth and the clock as its main focus, and I thought that was plenty to convey the idea.

I also liked that the tree is so tall and kinda twisted around itself in a fun way, and the canopy balances better with the ground underneath it by taking up less of the space (especially horizontally) - In the new logo the tree canopy and the ground are about equal in breadth and it leads to the image not really have the same sort of visual draw downward. This left space to the sides to put the game title in instead of having to cram it awkwardly over the gears, which further clutters the legibility and detracts from a core part of the art itself, the gears.

I think ultimately that regardless of the details and color palette, the new logo is just too blocky and cartoonish for no real benefit. As others have stated it feels more like the logo art for a Minecraft mod rather than its own game. If it was just a painting of a tree with clockwork and steampipes - like the original logo - it would feel more at place with the overwhelming "nature and untamed wilderness" theme the game has... Kind of hard to articulate what I mean, but the vibe of a smooth painting, or honestly even the rough sketch kind of look of the other pieces of official art, definitely fits Vintage Story. The blockiness feels less like an inspired choice and more like... "Well, it's a block game, so we have to make the logo blocky" which is silly. That's what EVERY uninspired block game uses for their key art!

[ExilationDev]

As an indie game developer and illustrator, I think this is quite a decent redesign overhaul for Vintage Story's logo. The blocky elements catch the vibe of the game being a block game, the features of the game in the logo are a nice touch, and the refined iconic gears from the bottom of the "normal world" are a good addition.

But...
As others have said, the logo is indeed too cluttered for a normal logo, the colors are too vibrant for a lore-ridden (post-apocalyptic) survival sandbox game (with a "rust world" mechanic), and the level of detail is too exaggerated, making it terrible to see as a desktop icon.

In my opinion, I prefer the old logo because of its less saturated colors, referencing how brutal the game is, how it fully reflects the game's look and feel, and its design simplicity and effectiveness.

[Irulana]

It loos nice as illustration, but why so many tiny details? logo should look good in very small size and in more simple version.

[Yunan]

Maybe consider making a competition for new logo. Old one looks a bit outdated, yes, but it fits considering oldey rustic style overall. New one is probably needed, but the current new one is a bit underwhelming. I feel like a competition would give more interesting variants to choose from.

[Nilhero]

I think that they both look great, But the old one is by far my favorite. The best way I can describe how I feel is that the current one is teen titans. The new one is teen titans go

[helsing-]

I personally like the old one as it encapsulates the tone & vibe of Vintage Story. The old artwork has a lot of charm to it, I love the hand-painted rustic art-style it's like an amazing cover of one of those fantasy books. I like the little overhanging soil/grass & the dark bits of stone at the edges of the ground, it gives off a creepy/unsettling feeling to it. 

The new one looks good but It looks too cluttered, I think some parts of the mechanism on & near the tree trunk needs to be reduced. The blockiness & outline gives off that cartoon-y look which I feel like doesn't fit Vintage Story for what it is.

[coolAlias]

I agree with a lot of the criticisms already mentioned, especially that simpler is better.

The old logo could use a rework, sure, but the new candidate is far too cluttered, has a weird mix of blocky and not blocky art styles, and the VS title overlaying the dark gears makes it harder to read.

[Esat Demirci]

Hey there, as a graphic design and concept artist, known as wisewight on twitter, I would like to help with the design if possible? Idk if you guys are using or planning to keep the same typeface, or the more muddy colors of the old logo to keep it a bit eary or uncertain, or all around in games developement and art style you guys are planning for a bighter look?

In any case I would love to help with anything if possible

[chuck]

new one looks ai generated

[AxeALotl]

I always thought the old one looked a little messy, but it did do a decent job of capturing the game's vibe. For the new one, I think the blocky stile is fine, but as other people have mentioned it feels to clean or even Hytale-y. The thick consistent outlines are a little too noticeable and the way the tree and leaves at the top are so healthy and large is not ideal. I think if the new model were reworked to be more gritty and imperfect it would be better. Also if the tree more like the old one in the way it felt a little odd, wrong, or mysterious, and you adopted a more muted, it would feel more accurate to the game. Other then that, prefer the new one. I voted reworked because I do think the tree needs a rework, even if this one isn't perfect.

I also agree with @Nicodemus that neither logo looks good scaled down. A professional logo should be artistic and beautiful, but it needs to have a recognizable outline and be readable. I actually think the gear idea is great as far as that goes, but doesn't quite have enough vintage story in it. I think finding a way to have a unique and recognizable symbol that still really conveys what your game is is important.

As for integrating that stile into the rest of the game a bit, I have similar thoughts. I like it being a bit cleaner or more readable, but it still needs that rusty or muddy look. Vibrant is fine, but not hytaley or unrealistic. Readable is fine, but not digital or high tech. Dramatic is fine, but not obvious or fantasy. You get the idea, the list goes on. 

Here is an example of a vintage story logo that is vibrant and a little voxely without being cartoony in a bad way, by N_H_Illustration on reddit. I think it has a nice muted look, though still is a bit too complex to be readable and needs more of that orangey and rusty color. I think something between these four logos is what we need. The clean and vibrant look of the one in this post, maybe the slightly voxely and professional look of the reworked, and the rusty colors of the old one and the gear from Nicodemus.

.

Edited April 24 by AxeALotl

[Sparkplug04]

The new logo gets the idea across quite nicely, but I do agree with a lot of the sentiment about the style needing to be reverted a bit. The sharp edges and extremely bright colors kind of betray the theme that the old logo sets up which blends into the game's style splendidly.

[SzotyMAG]

I feel it should be a mix of the two