Redesigning game logo with deep appreciations of the lore and culture

(disclaimer: copyrights of all images that uses the 'Shin Megami Tensei' monikers on this site belongs to Atlus and SEGA, do NOT use any of my redesigns OR original images without permission)

Foreword: this post goes into every single detail of the design of this logo and documents the whole creative process from research, ideation, iteration, and finalization of the design. It might be a bit lengthy and wordy but I hope this illustrates the passion and creativity put into this piece of work.

With the news of the enhanced re-release of Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, I picked back up the original version of the SMTV on Switch and is currently having a blast with my new game plus reborn hard mode playthrough to hype myself up for the re-release. I got so deep into the lore of SMTV and and even started to have some hour-long theory-crafting sessions with some of my fellow Megaten fan friends about how the story of Vengeance might go. One thing that particularly intrigued me was that the route Atlus decided to take with this re-release is that they still decide to put the OG storyline untouched into the re-release (unlike Persona 5 Royal or SMT Strange Journey Redux, which just implement new content into the the base game throughout the same playthrough), but creating an almost alternate timeline/universe for the new Vengeance route, and they named the OG story 'Canon of Creation' (as opposed to 'Canon of Vengeance' for the new route).

In the reveal video Dev Spotlight, Director Komori-San explained how they wanted to highlight the conflict and dichotomy of the bull gods (the horned gods) and the snake gods (dragon too). And we can clearly see the design motifs of snakes in the logo, like the swirl on the 'V' and the font design of 'engeance'.

PS: This is just a great interview to watch in general, I became a fan of Komori-San instantly after this. He explained why the OG SMTV was released the way it is, which was actually a phenomenal game to begin with some performance and QoL issues, and how they want to prove to fans like us they do have a lot more amazing ideas and content for that world, to redeem Shin Megami Tensei V with a vendetta, or 'Vengeance', heh. I have never seen someone in director role with this level of openness and vulnerability, and I appreciate that deeply

As a challenge for myself as a graphic designer, I wanted to design a logo for the 'Canon of Creation' route. So going back to the design motif, I want to heavily feature 'bull gods' as a pivot point and use 'horn' as the main motif, while keeping the visual language in the same vein as 'Vengeance', so that when put side to side, they can look and feel like they belong in the same world, just like the dichotomy of the two routes of the game.

I started digging deeper into the lore and visual language of not only the logo design of Vengeance, but the new 'canon of vengeance' route as a total work of art as a whole. And I found out that apart from the most conspicuous snake motif of the logo, it also heavily features the new group of characters, Qadistu, as seen frequently in this promo season and even featured on the box art. As well as this specific shade of coral pink as the signature color (which is one of my favorite color) that's kind of blood-like but still cutesy, just like the Qadistu characters.

Keywords: 'seductive, alluring, femme fatale'

Then I backtracked into researching the OG SMTV, and asked myself, 'Which character has a comparable significance of the Qadistu in the "Canon of Creation" route'. Then it clicked for me, it's Abdiel! This stunningly beautiful angel ('SLAYYY' if you would) that's was fighting to keep the orders of the world, the law alignment rep. Unfortunately she was very annoying for me personally in my first play through, definitely not instantly likeable like the Qadistu. (Hopefully as I go through my new game plus I'll grow to appreciate her more.) And the color of the OG logo uses this shade of platinum gold that is also the main color of Abdiel, as seen on her gold armors and spear.

Keywords: 'authoritative, formidable, goddess'

Unlike the Qadistu, she's not the only character apart from mc to be featured on the box art, but she is the one closest to the 'V' of 'SMTV' and her pose essentially frames the 'V', which I'd like to believe is intentional. Which makes sense for the OG SMTV since they would want to feature the chaos and neutral alignment rep, Nuwa, Hayataro, and Khonsu, too.

A little side track here, before I really dug into the visual language of Vengeance, I made a version that uses green as a prominent color (the opposite color of red), and picked the font from SMTIII Nocturne as the base font and tried adding highlights like the Vengeance logo and overlaying the 'C' in 'Creation' with the 'V'. But the readability turned out to be an issue and it felt a bit like a cheap knock-off version of Vengeance. It was a little bit too much on the nose for me, but nonetheless a great attempt, as it made me think deeper about what is the actual soul of Vengeance and Creation, and how to portray this dichotomy in the logo design.

Upon reviewing this pass, I realized the general readability of this design is not very good. First, the 'VC' overlap doesn't work. Obviously it works for Vengeance since it's both 'V', but the 'VC' here doesn't make sense and actually just reads like some Vitamin C supplement, XD. Second, font inconsistency is an issue as well. Without further tweaking, the base font from Nocturne ('Mael') I used for 'Creation' has not-so-good spacing and consistency itself, for example the 'a', the 'i', and the 'n' above that was intended and typed in bigger case letters but they appear in smaller case, which doesn't go well with the other bigger case letters. and the 'cr' here reads almost like a bigger case 'G' which is confusing on top of the already messy overlap with the 'V'. Third, the general curvature of different letters is a bit all over the place, like the curve on the right stroke of 'n', while nice, doesn't fit with the curvature of the 'e' and 'a'.

Comparing the 'Vengeance' to the base font  'FOTPoxum', unsurprisingly they did A LOT of tweaking of the base font, and it's very interesting to analyze what exactly they changed on the base font in order to put in the snake motifs. Apart from the most obvious swerving curve lines, they made some of the corners more curly and pointy and have swerving lines running across multiple letters. They also painted the highlights to be make the texture feel very glossy and slippery, which is in line with the visual identity of snakes. Then I realized, the reason the glossy highlights works for 'Vengeance' and did NOT work for 'Creation' on my first pass was because there was not enough thoughts put behind it, why is it a glossy green?

So I went back to the drawing board and did a bit more deep dive into the lore and visual language into SMTV OG and Vengeance. This time I started with the same base font as the 'Vengeance' subtitle for consistency, and set the color and style to be the same as the base logo. Immediately it already looks way better! And this shade of color, while being a gold-like beige, reads more matte texture-wise, which contrasts the glossiness of the Vengeance logo. That makes sense in the way that the bull's horns are usually more matte looking comparing to the slippery glossy snake. But how do I take it to the next level?

I really like the circular shapes in this font, seen in the letters 'C', 'O', and the upper part of the 'R'. The hook like strokes that extrudes out of the circles is has a great visual flair to it and actually already correlate to the 'horn' motif. But the first negative thing that stands out to me in this version is the letter 'E' here. It reads very blocky and square and doesn't fit in with the rest of the letters (mostly circles, with some angular shapes). I actually really like the 'E' from the previous font, being a circular shape with a stroke in the middle. So I used the 'C' here as a base and tried looking for single linear strokes from other letters in this font family to put in the middle to make the 'C'. With some experimentation, I ended up making 3 different iterations and finally landing on this particular design of 'E'.

Another thing I really want to do is to even more heavily feature the 'horn' and 'bull' motifs on one of the letters, like how they did with the additional swerves on the 'V'. But which letter to pick? The 'T' followed by the 'I' seemed like a great candidate, since it's reading a bit too straight and blocky again with the perpendicular angles. But I really like the little curves on the ends of the 'I' and it's looking exactly like horns. Also I feel like a lot can be done with the letter 'T' since there are already a lot of different ways to write the 'T', and also more strokes essentially means more room to work with.

I just keep thinking about how mesmerized I am with the logo animation and how the snake seamlessly transitions into the 'V' on the Vengeance logo. And while I don't really have a literal bull to pull from from the game, who is the main character that has significant 'horn' and 'bull' motifs in the design and is the counter part of Qadistu characters with significant 'snake' motifs? Our law alignment rep, the goddess herself, Abdiel. What stands out in her character concept art to me is her shoulder piece and her spear, those are the parts that have a lot of bull and horn elements. So I did a little collage of those parts and arranged them into a 'T' like composition. Very happy with the result, I started drawing the vector shape lightly tracing this collage. I also like the higher frequency scales on her wing like shoulder piece (it's almost an iconic staple of the visual style of the demon concept artist, Masayuki Doi, as seen in a lot of his demon designs) and try to emulate that in the top part of the 'T'.

After putting it all together and did a proper pass on detailing, such as spacing, coloring, and setting up layer, I'm starting to really like the final look and I'm proud of what I created. This time it actually do match the style and quality of the Vengeance logo as much as I can push to achieve in the timeframe I set for myself. I ended up plugging them onto some of the promo art materials of the OG SMTV and I think they look pretty neat and believable as an official-ish logo!

Thanks for bearing with me throughout this long post! I hope my redesign did this amazing game justice, especially to the fans and lovers. And I hope it resonates with you who is reading and actually make you want to pick up this game and go on this journey with Abdiel and the bull gods if you haven't yet!

PS: I have to give a shout out to my college best friend Jiani Suo who is an amazingly talented graphic designer and architect, for giving me pointers and bumping ideas off of during the creative process. We actually both worked as the Deputy Head of the PR department in the SEUArch student union and designed promotional materials like flyers for various school events, so this experience was very reminiscent for me of that time. Words cannot express how deeply I appreciate you sister!