Before you guys put too much work into polishing off Phase's latest logo, I wanted to point out why I haven't done one with a different font for Legend. By having a tiny "The Legend of" in a very noticeably different font, having it sit on top of a giant "Xanadu II" and contrasting the two by having "The Legend of" in printing and "Xanadu II" in cursive, the title has effectively been changed to "Xanadu II", with a minor subtitle.
I totally agree that it would be ideal to have all the words be more balanced, and that "Xanadu" is perhaps a little overemphasized in Phase's logo. If his has any profound and unfixable flaw, this is it.
I also get the contradiction you feel about your very first submission being disqualified on "Linguistic Faithfulness" or whatever we can agree to call it. Here's the thing: on that criterion, your original gets an F, and his gets a C. Sorry if that's blunt, but I'm trying to be quick and clear.
You can still blame me for not getting on you and elmer earlier about that one, too.
I'm confident that the broad consensus among both casual and hardcore PCE gamers would be that Phase's is simply the best one we have right now, and though it may not get straight A's in every category, it's acceptable enough to ship the game with.
I'm still very interested in seeing your full cursive version, or anything else you have up your sleeve.
Considering how big of a deal it was for Sam to have a "The" on the title logo for a game that everyone calls "Legend of Xanadu", because "Legend" is as defining to the title as "Xanadu", and since Xanadu is a pre-existing game and series of its own, I've made sure to keep the two key words in the same font and so far at least, not made "Legend" proportionately any smaller than it already is in the official cursive logo. In the Japanese logo, Kaze and Densetsu are completely equal.
風の伝説ザナドゥ
風 = Wind
の = (possessive particle)
伝説 = Legend
ザナドゥ = Xanadu
So, "Xanadu" and "Legend of the Wind" are equal. It's certainly fair to say that "Xanadu" is only half of the title. That's your point, right?
Be that as it may, I think it's also fair to say that "Xanadu" is the single most important word, and that this is even more true in the Japanese title than the English. Furthermore "The Legend of" as it exists in Phase's logo is not so terribly downsized that people are going to ignore it altogether.
This game is also part of the same lineage as Falcom's original Xanadu; The Legend of Xanadu 1's credit roll calls it Dragon Slayer VIII at the very end. Whether these PCE games are sequels or spinoffs or whatever else, it doesn't seem too great an offense to risk them being mentally listed in some gamer's minds as "Xanadu, The Legend of".
---------------------
Food for thought: here are a bunch of criteria that I use to judge these, in no particular order and probably not including everything:
- Is it linguistically faithful?
- Is each letter well formed?
- Is the whole harmonious and visually pleasing?
- Is it easy to read?
- Does it jive with the background?
- Is it stylistically appropriate for the games?
- Does it have logo-like flair?
We've had some very nice submissions indeed, but nothing has really thoroughly aced all of these yet. We'll take the best one we have that doesn't have any D's or F's, is the way I see it.
