Transport Tycoon Forums

planetmaker wrote:I fully agree with your assessment of the current logo. It's unimaginative, non-descriptive and mis-leading. The about only positive about it is its age; people got used to it.

Thanks for your contribution planetmaker, you raise an excellent point. The only positive thing about it is simultaneously the biggest negative thing about it.

planetmaker wrote:The idea to use the Ts in OpenTTD as buffers is great, but I'm not entirely conviced of the result yet - and I'm sad this is not constructive criticism but a rather unimaginative 'feeling'.

This is a more general reply, not specifically to planetmaker because others have the same considerations. My explanation is this:

It does not have to be and in fact even shouldn't be obvious to the point of everyone (100%) "getting it". Symbolism with that high of a degree of obviousness can come off as naive or... dumb. In the corporate world people pay good money to serious designers because of that very thing. They can hold back. A high school kid can make the gfx alone of they have the skills and the talent.

My point, it doesn't have to be obvious.

Try this - imagine it on the side of a train.
The side of a cargo container.
An integral part of livery
Ships have it spray painted on the side

It's enough if it's unique and recognizable, we can only truly make it our own through adopting it and using it. The batch of 32bpp gfx I hope I'll have time to start working on will be containers in stations which will have this logo on the side. It's universal and ubiquitous within OTTD.

It will say OTTD when you take a screenshot and post it somewhere. In 32bpp they can be zoomed in and over time they will start to look impressive and beautiful.

I hope I'm helping in alleviating those types of worries. It really doesn't have to be obvious.
When we manage to get into the content of what we want and why then we can assess how much recognition we want or do we want it at all.

Identity graphics do not serve to convey only content, depends on what it is but it's more about conveying feelings or concepts which can be very vague or abstract and mean different things to different people.
As planetmaker pointed out, a part of appeal of TTD/OTTD is it can be played in many different ways. Ubiquity.
The first and most important measure should be - does it look professional enough to reflect the kind of work, dedication, effort that goes into all sorts of aspects of it?
Then the rest is emotional, personal, relevant as well but in this case, with a community this size, I would say less so because there will never be a consensus anyway, the core developer team will at some point have to just decide and push something through and place the exact amount of worth on the opinions of trolls that they truly have = zero.

I am looking for your feelings of fun - how do you all play ottd personally, what is the part of it that gives you that FUN feeling? I'd like to assemble a list of that and see how different it is from my personal experience and what the general average is. Iterations follow

Ok next is:

kamnet wrote:Which is, sadly, why I'd not want to use it. To be honest we've not had any negative dealings with Mr. Sawyer, and I'd certainly like to keep it that way. Even though OpenTTD isn't really anything like Transport Tycoon (nee Locomotion), and day-by-day the two are growing further apart, I'd like to make sure we retain some distance

That's a legitimate point kamnet. However the half train half truck is far enough, you don't have to worry. Part of retaining distance can be excluding ships and planes. On purpose. And even if it was similar, this is all handmade and nobody can claim any copyright dispute, all they need to see is we specifically made attempts to find our own way.

There are problems in the corporate world with having abstract logos, they run the risk of not being distinct enough, at the same time, you want to simplify it visually to improve its recognition yet retain individuality. My first pick, the "O||D" is just that. Enough to be recognizable yet simple enough, also very far from TTD.
See, I don't view OTTD as "just a game" which is what TTD was - a commercial product intended to create revenue and ultimately profit. OTTD in its very essence is a completely different beast.
Seems we're on the same page, we want distinction.

The illustrative ideas I made are distinct enough for any copyright issues, I just want to put your mind at ease there, however it does make it look more like "just a game", not an open source project.

next

kalen wrote:I feel like you really can't have the "O-||-D" logo without the accompanying "OpenTTD" label (like in the last image), because otherwise nobody will know what the logo means unless they've read this thread, which isn't very likely, if we're being real here.

I touched on the level of obvious above. Yes, the symbol is not the logo, it's only a part of it. Logo can stand on its own but logo means both the symbol and type. And that's okay.

Regarding your other considerations the 32bpp stuff that exists now, the base set is low quality, artistically speaking yet it's damn impressive it even exists. This is not a criticism of the author, I imagine whatever the talent, experience and skills of an author are, they probably had a very real choice to make either do 1 thing properly or try to get 100 done asap. It's a very important step though, it now exists and it is something people can get inspired by to contribute, create, improve, etc. That's kind of why I'm here now in this capacity.

I wish I had more time on my hands right now to be able to do some 32bpp stuff and incoporate this in a nice way into containers, trains, trucks so you can see what the fun of having our own (however abstract) identity is In due time.

So thank you all again for your input, next post, some fun stuff.

Ok I promised a fun part, to save some a trip to the dictionary because it reminds me of that "that word you keep using..." meme.

Ladies and genetlemen, lo and behold, I give you:



OpenTTD The Hipster Edition!






Retro can be good or it can be junk.
Old junk is still just junk. Rehashed old junk the same janky way is... you guessed it, still junk.

I stuck to the damn diamond shape but squeezed it a bit. Looks better this way.

If the original was circular and I stuck to that, this is proper beer coaster material right there!

Now in keeping with tradition, there has to be a transparent version of it as well.
Set to some random scenic photos.

And add random "profound bulls***" (http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/12/profound-bulls***/) and voila! hipsterism extraordinaire.





There's a point here too - however simplistic/dumb an idea, like the dollar square in a diamond, it can still be done well. Even if the choice of "well" is silly. I built the diamond badge from scratch with silly elements that are relatively correct (date, platforms etc) and there are still upgrades pending if it was actually serious, hand lettering, hand shading with ink etc.

I am wondering what these graphics and logos will be used for? OTTD is downloaded, there is no box or CD to print them on.

Also most desktop icons aren't much bigger than 32x32 or 64x64 pixels, and normal icons are usually 16x16. with that level of pixelization most of these designs would be unrecognizable.

Anything,

• game splash screen
• game title
• banners
• icons, in-game, web, whatever
• textures for rendering in-game items or otherwise
• tasteful dark or bright screenshot overlays, tiny or not so tiny for screenshot sharing or screenshot competitions so if they're passed around to other random forums people get to find out that it was ottd etc.
• sigs, fun forum stuff
• make a coaster or a keychain if you're a fan but probably the most important domain of all...
• use it in official correspondence with the media when it's exposure time.

I can give you one practical example, saw a list of top linux games or top_<some theme>_kind_of games and OpenTTD was listed somewhere in the middle but contrary to all others, no logo. They added a logo and then a screenshot of every game as a header and wrote a short synopsis underneath with links to the full reviews and original web sites. Well openttd was the only one without logo, they just added a screenshot cropped to that centered "OpenTTD" text you see above the main menu. They assumed there was no logo because that's the only thing you see when it loads I reckon, and perhaps assumed that the diamond dollar was probably just some generic placeholder, that is exactly what I assumed, I didn't remember it was the old original thing from '94 at first. Well that's actually incorrect I believe the logo was really the illustration and the diamond dollar was just used as a filler since originally there were two of these fillers on each side.

Whatever the case, I just think it deserves better than to come off as some amateurish unfinished thing you don't even want to try struggling with, which is the impression from skimming that list (if I remember i'll edit and add links later). That simple.

kamnet wrote:But, if we were going to use the above logo, I don't like representing just trains or the bottom of a truck. Like the TT logo I would like to see all forms of transport represented. OpenTTD is *not* just a train game, it covers a broad swath of the transport industry.

You bring up a good point. I thought about this too. It's about transport in general. It just so happens that trains are the most fun, we however can't afford to just have 4 different vehicles as a logo. That becomes an illustration, it's not a logo anymore.

sidenote: as an exercise and because I'm curious, can you think of any one thing/idea/concept/feeling/direction/symbol/... that would encompass all that is "transport" for you?
Think of it as an exercise in reduction.

Ok so about complexity, logos need to be reducible. Complexity is bad. The more complex, the sooner they "fail", cease to be recognisable as you start to reduce them.
This transport tycoon title screen is just that, a whole title screen/splash screen, not a logo. Imagine you want a cutout, that doesn't work anymore. The logo of TT is now that green badge which, if you can't engrave, then its silhouette is just something nondescript generic and it ceases to be recongisable. See the concept i settled on, the minimal type buffers - would work in both these cases.
Ok we're not going to be making woodcuts, but say you want make a few new 32bpp station graphics with a truck parked outside with a container and you want to slap the OTTD logo on it because you don't want it to look all plastic-fantastic-toy-like but rather a realistic look and details like that help. See what I mean?

Let me know if you get any ideas on what could be representative of transport

Hydros wrote:My point, it doesn't have to be obvious.

I agree with that, but there are two sides of that coin:

• The logo can look obviously like "OTTD" and non-obviously like a train.
• The logo can look obviously like a train and non-obviously like "OTTD".

Currently I think the logo tries to reach for "obviously looking like 'OTTD'", but it fails at that because it actually looks like "OHHD".
Thus I would like to suggest to reverse the coin: Make it look more like a train, and only on second look noticeable that they are letters.

Random mockup: Shortening the buffers to remove the "H" impression. Edit:
Another thing I want to mention: What should the logo tell someone who doesn't know the game yet?
I would expect that whoever encounters the logo will already have the context "game". But nothing more specific.
The current $ logo says "this game is about money". Which for a first impression IMHO is not that far off.

However, a pure text logo doesn't say anything, which IMHO strengthens the point to make above logo look more like a train, and less like a text.

Wrt. the more explicit logos with trains and busses and stuff: IMHO they only work when the logo is displayed at large size. These logos cannot be represented in some fine print in some corner of something else. To me that is a downside.

On the reverse: You can always add more details to simplified logos when zooming in. In this case: The two "O" would obviously offer themself to draw something inside them: Like a loaded cargo of a wagon.
The awesome part of a logo that naturally allows adding some "cargo" to it is: You can adjust the logo in an easy way to make it fit into some other context:

• Add bananas as cargo -> Bananas logo (today: https://media.openttd.org/images/layout ... ananas.png)
• Add flags as cargo -> WebTranslator logo (some time ago: https://media.openttd.org/images/layout ... slator.png)
• Add documents as cargo -> Wiki logo
• Add a shield as cargo -> Security advisor (today: https://media.openttd.org/images/layout ... curity.png)
• Add files to it -> Download server (today: https://media.openttd.org/images/layout ... naries.png)
• ...

Funnily we added those extra symbols to the "OpenTTD" text. We could also have put them in place of "$"

Active community. Excellent.

It would be cool if anyone could compile a list of potential applications (like this was good frosch, the wiki icons).
If I can see what the rough scope of applications would be, I can plan ahead and make some choices to make some of that easier later perhaps.

Here is my next batch of iterations in a direction in which we seem to be going, let's see how this feels?





Bananas Funny

It could be an extra added rolling stock of a different type so it's in style.

Or a train about to stop at a station (say university for wiki) or crossing a bridge.

I love the aerodynamic cab version ... number one the most probably

I really like the retro designs (although I think the word "hipster" can be left out) Much better than the buffer design, which to me feels kinda over-thought or forced.

I like the second version "extended length and more balanced form".

A thing I noticed: The current logo uses a smaller font for "PEN" to represent the capitalisation/words. No idea, how it would affect the looks, but it may benefit the "reader".

Wrt. contexts: Uhm... I don't know. One can make up many different ones, but most are unlikely to be worth the effort a separate logo. I would also not expect a website to switch logo, when switching to a different tab on the navigator.

• Main website obviously needs a logo. Likely the most generic one without stuff added.
• Today the wiki has an entirely different logo, which to my knowledge was an early alternative logo suggestion for OTTD in the early 32bpp context (meaning about 2005, that is: way before there was any 32bpp about OTTD at all). The general problem with the Wiki logos seems to be, that they are square, while all other places require rectangular logos.
• BaNaNaS is likely worth the effort a separate logo.
• Icon in desktop/startmenu shortcuts: Generally square.
• Start splashscreen (I believe we only have that on OSX): Generally BIG.
• For the other pages I have no idea why they ever got a separate logo:
  • WebTranslator: The new webtranslator has no logo at all.
  • Security Advisor: No "user" looks there anyway. It's not even obviously linked somewhere.
  • There was even a NoAI logo for the no longer existing NoAI repositories.

Adding more wagons? I don't think the main OTTD website should do that, since it makes it a "OOOTTD" logo. However, I could imagine the #openttdcoop DevZone to do something similar Like a (two-)stake wagon for the "#"... (sorry, may be a terrible idea).

Also, a disclaimer, just to say it early:
All you pictures contain a copyright notice. While I don't mind this at all in the discussion, it should be clear, that OpenTTD would only accept an icon that can be used by it freely and 3rd-party stuff (like fansites or download directories or whatever). I.e. OpenTTD would have to own the icon to some extent, or would have to be GPL or CC-BY-SA licensed or similar. Essentially reusable also in modified form, and not restricted unmodified for a single site.

I can't tell the difference between aerodynamic 1 and 2, so I'm gonna go with @frosch and say door number 2 wins.
EDIT: Wait, I looked more closely and now I can tell the difference. Yea, door number 2, definitely.

@Hydros: I do agree the symbol doesn't necessarily need to be completely obvious, but it shouldn't be completely misleading either. As mentioned previously, the initial version looked a lot more like OHHD (or even GHHD) and a lot less like OTTD, and that was pretty much completely counter-productive.

This new version, however, is IMO really cool. The buffers look like rotated T letters, they don't fight with the O and D any more, so they shouldn't lead to misreading it as OHHD any more for the most part, and the aerodynamic D makes the symbol look like a high-speed train, which is both clever and cute.

I don't know how useful these designs (both this one and the logo with vehicles) will be for the actual program icons on the desktop, but as far as other applications go, I'm definitely on-board with it now.

Also, regarding your retro and vintage fun post: those designs look absolutely sweet, but to me they absolutely look like Railroad Tycoon 2 inspired, actually, not TTD. Whether that was intended or just a happy coincidence, that's what it looked like to me.

Emperor Jake wrote:I really like the retro designs (although I think the word "hipster" can be left out) Much better than the buffer design, which to me feels kinda over-thought or forced.

I hope the inclusion of the "hipster edition" language was just a little sarcasm,and a simpler version with fewer words would be the actual version to consider.

I really like your version 2 in the recent post - to my mind, it's much easier to read as 'OTTD' than the original versions, and just looks tidier in general.

Have you tried colouring the letters in the existing orange and green? I guessed that was the idea with the poll, which seems to have come out fairly clearly.

While it's very neat, I don't really see how it could be useful:
- It's completely the wrong shape for a desktop icon, web favicon, or most other places the current icon is used.

- It doesn't fit with the (default) dithery pixel-art style, so it's not suited to the menu-screen (or anywhere else prominent in-game, not that those exist yet AFAIK). You could draw it semi-legibly in pixels on the side of a truck, but few people would recognise it.

- Given the above two, no-one who just played the game would recognise it since it wouldn't appear anywhere. Using it in other contexts (installation splash, web, media) would be very confusing and split the identity.


(And I really disliked the generic faux-designer T-shirt 'hipster' versions until reading the actual text! ).

Yes, number 2. Although, PEN in OPENTTD should be written so that it looks smaller, like OPENTTD.

These look a bit like a train, a bit like a buffer, and a bit like the word OTTD. It's better than your previous attempts. I think it need some colour though, but I'm sure we could get around to adding that

Supercheese wrote:

Chrill wrote:I kinda really like the current OpenTTD logo.

As do I. I even made myself an OpenTTD logo keychain using my 3D printer.

Omg i would most definately buy one of these from you too! Considerd selling these on eBay or something?

Pen is written equal height for a very specific reason, it is not "TTD but just open" as spelling it "OpenTTD" would imply, but it's something quite different, from a player's perspective it's much improved and that's not even counting all the NewGRF and possibilities that come with YETI, ECS, etc... also the more one looks under the hood, the more it becomes apparent that this is a completely different beast and as such, it deserves to have a name of its own, differentiate itself, be more recognisable and just, stand on its own. This is yet another small step in that direction.

This is a recurring theme and any steps in that direction have been met with welcome.

It's time for further iterations:







State your preferences in as many words as you can

Since orange was picked as primary, the green is subdued to make it secondary. Variation could go light but darker green just contrasts that particular orange at that brightness more, which is desirable in any two tone scheme.

F1 and F2 are starting to look really nice. How would it look if you change the proportions a bit and make it fit inside a square?

Some random thought on the logo which was floating in my head for a few days. I meant to make a sketch but missed the time to do so, thus only the quote from IRC:

<planetmaker> I wonder(ed) whether the logo could be adjusted such that the 'pen' from OpenTTD could be the cargo in the train. And the first T (tilted 90°) kind of the bottom on which the 'pen' lies...
<planetmaker> the 'pen' of course in smaller font
<planetmaker> in that trail of thought it could resemble a freight train... O = boxed car. penT = flatbed wagon TD = engine

In a2 with the extra bars, the |OPENTTD| lettering suddenly looks like rail tracks under the train!

That's a really neat effect IMO - perhaps you could accentuate that even more somehow?

Of the coloured variants, I prefer c2. The mono-colour ones just don't look right somehow; the orange badge with grey text is alright but takes some focus away from your clever shape.

Now how about a rework of the "Retro" without the "Hipster" language?