Make your typography great (again?)

[Lea_ro]

Save it for calligraphy practice where it's never too flourished
Glad to help!

[Lea_ro]

Hey!

Actually, it's quite good already. And much better than the two previous ones

The main points of improvement would be:

— The size and weight of the initial letters D and S are too important compared to the rest so we will reduce them. This will allow a better general silhouette and to have less white space between the two words.
— The O and G's look too small compared to the other letters and their inside need a little more breathing space.
— A few kerning fixes: space is too big between A and G, and P and A, too narrow between I and N
— The spine of the S could turn a little more graciously, also I changed the shape a little bit to add some "shine"
— I pushed some stars to give more space to the text. No need for a dot on the "i" when in capital.

Voilà

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Sweet. Thanks! That really helps.

[Lea_ro]

Hello

Your concept is not the most legible ever but it's nicely expressive, so I stayed close to your design.

The main thing to fix would be consistency. If you look at the logo with eyes almost closed you will notice black areas and white areas inside of it, when it should be homogeneous. I circled the white ones:

Basically I changed the shape of every letter to fill that white space in a more homogeneous way.
— reduced space between L and A
— changed the shape of "C" to avoid white space on the bottom right
— enlarged K, E, I and Y that were too thin compared to the rest
— shifted the S so that it would kiss the O better

I did a test with the add of counterforms. That makes the design less black but more legible, so that's up to you!

Also I suggest to avoid black letters on black background, because the eye needs a minimum of contrast to recognize the shape of every letter without effort

[IndigoShirtProd]

Thanks for the advice!

[Lea_ro]

Hello

First thing is perspective: try to keep the same for the two words + the letters inside "one":

Second thing I think it's better to have the "S" not too big and low compared to "quare" or else at first glance we read only "quare" and not "square" so something like that would be better:

I diminished certain characteristics of the font that I think are not necessary and sometimes not consistent (ex: lower part of the "E", and all the little stuff that "pokes out" of letters).
It looked a little bit calligraphic but not on every letter so we must choose to keep it everywhere or not at all.

To be honest I still think this design is missing something, specially when you put it on top of clockwork. Did you choose an existing font that you modified or did you draw the letters yourself?
It would probably be better to chose something bolder for more impact and legibility

[DualDragons]

Hey thanks for reviewing. Yeah, I used a font.
To be honest I'm so clueless when it comes to typography for titles and logo's.

[Lea_ro]

It comes with practice and a little knowledge

It depends on the atmosphere of your future comic.

Is it about a mechanical / steampunk universe?

[DualDragons]

Well it's an aspect of it. Although it's not the main point of the story, hence why I'm fixing and possibly redoing it in the future

[desktop_dragon]

[Lea_ro]

If you give me more info about the main themes I can suggest some typographic styles!

[DualDragons]

Ok, so to sum it up:

• The story revolves around a female protagonist, who at the time is a queen and rules a respective country.
• The countries have technology comparable to industrial revolution levels.
• She is put down and loses her status/power due to her tyrannical way of ruling. She basically has to start over again to regain it. Hence the title Square One.

Funnily enough, I was sketching out some ideas on paper yesterday for a alternative logo that is more centered around the mc instead of the steampunk aspect:

[Kelheor]

Wow, these are some great examples!
Maybe you could help my Hexameron title too, any advice will be greatly appreciated
The whole point is that this red spotty background is the raggedy cloak of the main monster of the series, and the white thin letters stand for his white body (with some occasional hands) showing from the uneven cuts on the cloak.

It's my first attempt in the logo ever, I kinda like it, but don't know how to make it better ^^

[Lea_ro]

Hi folks! Sorry, I neglected the internet for a while. I will try to answer you both soon

[Lea_ro]

I'm back!

On the drawing you made, you seem to go for a "coat of arms" feeling with symbols around (axe + crown ?). In order to avoid being too "middle-age" we need to choose a font style that refers to the 19th century and the age of the machine.

Here are my suggestions :

For something more fitting a female character (depending on her personnality that is…)

For something really close to history, machines and "show-off", go for early slab serif like this

For something more contemporary, narrow sans-serif like you drew can do. You can try a narrow grotesque style (= sans serif, with light upstrokes and downstrokes)

and / or monospace

For something more steampunk / videogame / futuristic

I put font links on some pics if you want to download them and "redraw" them. They're free of use!

About the drawing you made I would suggest having the text bigger compared to its ornaments because it has to be readable in small size

[DualDragons]

Thanks for the feedback! Sorry for the late response, I was at work

[Lea_ro]

Hi!

First thing it looks quite great already and adequate to the story.

My main concern is that the letters do not look like they are cut out from the cloak, but more laid on top of it. That's because of the black lining and black background behind the whole thing.

If you want to convey this idea more, I suggest you withdraw the lining, and put a shadow inside the letters to add volume.

Also the shape of the letters sometimes looks like torn fabric but sometimes like sharp bone shapes which are different materialities. Maybe it would look nice to add hanging threads and small hanging pieces of fabric? What about one or two little folds? Also you could overlay a fabric texture on the cloak so that it would be less flat and even.

I tried the shadow thing quickly (and badly) on photoshop :

The shape of the word is unbalanced on the left side. That's not a big problem since the idea is to be irregular but why not fix it since I'm here aha.

We could improve the spacing. N is too bold. Also some letters like the "M" and "E"'s are a little bit too narrow compared to X /R / N that are wide, so I fixed them.

I withdrew the hands to focus on the letters. Maybe you don't need to have three of them and a bigger one would be enough?

I tried damaging the letters more but it becomes hard to read because the letters are already very narrow so let's be reasonable with alterations so that we don't have too much stuff going on!

Voilà

[Kelheor]

Whooooa this is amazing and really fun to compare actually

Thank you so much for your work, this is very helpful indeed, I'll try to think about how to incorporate your feedback!

[Lea_ro]

Glad to help
Good luck with the texture and all.

If you want you can also make one letter higher than the others on the right to balance with the X! (I was thinking R)

[carolhildebrand]

Oh man, I've been lurking on this thread for a couple of weeks and I'm in awe of your work! Your insight is always spot on

I'm a bit nervous and this is my first time actually saying something in the forum, but I'm working on my first comic and I'm not 100% happy with the logo I came up with, so I might as well ask for help

My story is about a high school girl whose soul is mistakenly taken to the underworld before she's dead, so she and a local spirit go on a quest to appease the god of death and convince him to help her go back home. The genre is mainly fantasy with some romance. The tone is more on the middle school adventure and silly side, but it does get a little more serious sometimes, as it is a story about death.

This is what I have right now:

I struggled to choose a font style that would balance out the silly and somber aspects, so I did it myself but I'm still not sure if it's clear enough. It'd be amazing if you could help me!

(Oh, the cross is supposed to represent both those grave crosses and a sword)