Fountain Alliance Logo Study ( 1st version )

History & Idea:

To get a logo with a meaning, I first reseached some background about anything that's connected with FA, its purpose and it's doing.

In many ancient mythologies, areas that have a certain worth, or holyness are protected by certain artifacts. A widly common indication of a protected area is the "gate shrine". They are positioned at the enty points of the area that needs spiritual protection.

Water, as the symbol of purity, cleaning and also unity is often found at these gates in form of a well, or fountain sprinkler.
Sometimes even the water itself is protected by its gates. The hanging gardens of babylon, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world had dozens of such shrines.

Now the idea is to give the logo a meaning. The meaning should be clear at this point :
protection & unity.

A logo that symbolizes the protection towards the Fountain region and its habitants and the unity among the alliance corps.

I therefore have chosen the way of getting the "shrine gate" shape into a logo, without losing a contemporary and futuristic style.

Remember : without meaning and solid background a logo is really worthless.
Shrine in japan




Many gates indicating a protected area. Only "pure" ones are allowed to access. water often stands in combination with these gate shrines, cuz it stands for cleaning and purity.
The basic shape:  
As you can see, I build the whole logo within a "shield" like protecting hull, along with the "horns" that symbolizes the gate-shrine shape. Some ppl identify these "horns" as sign of evilness, but that's not the case here. trust me :P
Mutating the shape:  
of course we need the tag "Fountain Alliance" written to our logo, when printed in bigger scale, to brandmark it properly.

Note the "sqares" under the shape. These are 22 exactly, for each corporation one. An interactive version of the logo ( i.e. a flash ) could support a mouseover on each of these squares to show the corp logo & info of the member corp.
of course a red version cannot be left out.

basically the basic colorscheme should be clear at this point.
grey - red, red - grey, grey - grey. its always one logo, the rest is kind of taste.
a simple grey only version should be available as well for print & fax. ( i.e. letter heads or bill logos ;)
Enhancing the shape:  
of course we wanna see a brushed metal version of our logo. note that this one is just a quick & dirty attempt.
   
Finals : 64x64  

the most importaint thing about a weblogo is that its shape is recognizeable at low pixel sizes. most logos lose their face once you go below 64x64 pixel.

this one is actually 64x35.
80x80  
80x80 is already a size where we can go with some shading, although we need to kill the text layers within the logo and swap it out as an own pixeltype.
400x400  
the "stamped platin" look in 400x178 actual size.
   
That's all folks. questions, abuse, "stuff" to mindjam@epij.org
  2004 mindjam