The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

The licence of Typ. Rotunda is ok. I would have to tweak some of it (like the annoying knobs on the stems of h and l), but I can do that in the font file in Fontforge, so the changes would be consistent across translations.

Those are my favourite effects too, but unfortunately they both have the problem of shapes within the letters, which make them harder to read. We need an effect even simpler than the raised metal one. I'll try some flat metal shape tommorrow.
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by beetlenaut »

In you example image, the swords stand out against the background just fine. What would be wrong with keeping the raised metal effect but using silver letters instead of gold? That idea was kicked around before, but it didn't make a lot of difference. With the new, browner background, I think it would look nice.
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ancestral
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by ancestral »

Sgt. Groovy wrote:The licence of Typ. Rotunda is ok. I would have to tweak some of it (like the annoying knobs on the stems of h and l), but I can do that in the font file in Fontforge, so the changes would be consistent across translations.

Those are my favourite effects too, but unfortunately they both have the problem of shapes within the letters, which make them harder to read. We need an effect even simpler than the raised metal one. I'll try some flat metal shape tommorrow.
I played around with the logo in Inkscape and found some success using the “Retractive Gel B” filter.

Here’s what I came up with:
bfwlogo-scaled.png
(I’ve kept all the steps written down in case someone wants them, including resizing, kerning and colors.)
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vultraz
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by vultraz »

I spoke to Jetrel about the possibility of us dropping the article - that is, 'The' - from the logo so it simply reads 'Battle for Wesnoth' on one line. He said to bounce the idea around a few people, so I figured it might as well be brought up here where we're working on the logo. Personally, I think it makes it look quite sleek. Opinions?
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Iris
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by Iris »

I (paraphrasing) wrote:No.
It looks weird and unbalanced more than sleek.
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UnwiseOwl
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by UnwiseOwl »

I personally think it looks much better without, I just wonder if it looking better is really worth effectively changing the name of the game.
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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

Beetlenaut: Colourless metal would help somewhat:
Weslogo-text4.png
Ancestral: For visibility, your version works ok, but aestethically it looks rather bland, too smooth and glossy. I would prefer something edgier and more rustic. Technically, the effect would have to be done with one filter working on a black shape, that will make translations much easier.

I have no strong feelings about the article, but dropping it wouldn't make my life easier. What about other language versions, should articles be removed from them too (where grammatics allow)? Seems like lot of hassle for nothing - if it ain't broken, don't fix it.
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Kess
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by Kess »

First, welcome back and thanks for all your work, Sgt. Groovy! I really like how this logo is coming along.

Hopefully not to distract from your work on the logo, but regarding the licensing of Typographer Rotunda... someone may wish to look this up further.

Dieter Steffmann writes in several comments throughout his homepage that the fonts only are available for noncommercial use, with some exceptions. Elsewhere he writes all are “free”. I have just glanced at the comments and not read them all, perhaps a more clear “license” is given somewhere.

The main font page does not list Typographer Rotunda, but for the selection shown on this page the following permission/restriction is given:
Hier sehen Sie eine Auswahl meiner Schriften. Sie dürfen diese für private Zwecke frei verwenden!
My free translation: “You here see a selection of my fonts. You may freely make use of these for private-use!”

As per instruction I downloaded the font from typOasis.

The downloaded zip archive only contain four font files, no instructions/permissions/restrictions/other.

The fonts themselves has the following to say, via Fontforge:
Copyright: Copyright (c) Typographer Mediengestaltung, 2002. All rights reserved. Digitized and hinted by Dieter Steffmann, Kreuztal.
Trademark: Please refer to the Copyright section for the font trademark attribution notices.
License: Have fun and enjoy
License URL: http://www.steffmann.de
Embeddable: Printable Document
Comment:
FONTLOG:
“Have fun and enjoy” could possibly be taken as a grant to use the font however we wish, but the restricted embeddable setting and possibly the comments on the homepage could be seen that this not is a free font. Someone may wish to look this up further, possibly with Dieter himself.

A small note for those using this font, to take some care:
  • Several glyphs are encoded in other characters’ places, for instance the “ch” ligature is encoded as the less-than sign (<)
  • The diaresis (¨, e.g. ö) is stylistically drawn close to how the double acute (˝, e.g. ő) looks in—for instance—Hungarian, some tweaking (if allowed) may be necessary for languages that make this distinction
  • “Only” the Latin characters in the Unicode ranges of “Basic Latin” and “Latin-1 Supplement” are supported, plus a couple others from “Latin Extended-A” (such as ł and œ)
I am quite curious how the logo will turn out!
Last edited by Kess on August 1st, 2015, 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

It seems there is no unambiguous license for this font. Since I need to modify the font file (add some necessary cyrillic and greek glyphs etc.) and possibly redistribute the modified file, at least among the developers, we probably need a font that is explicitly either public domain or GPL. There are very few of those...
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UnwiseOwl
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by UnwiseOwl »

The font creator (if indeed it's the fellow from http://www.steffmann.de is still around and posting regular blog updates. Before we go looking for a new font, maybe a German speaker could approach him and ask for explicit permission for Wesnoth uses? You never know your luck.
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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

Well, I already have found two potential replacements:
Weslogo-text5.png
Weslogo-text5.png (373.26 KiB) Viewed 4914 times
The upper one is "Oldania", released under GPL, so no restrictions for us.

The lower one is "Carolus FG", license allowing private and commercial use, modification, but not redistribution of modified font files. This isn't a problem though, as the modified glyphs will be included in the SVG file and can be reused from there if necessary.

The lower one isn't as legible as the more straight ones, but thanks to its wide t and l, it's more easy to balance. Also, the design principles are rather flexible, so making modifications is easy.
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ancestral
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by ancestral »

If we’re including “the” I would suggest making it much smaller.
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vultraz
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by vultraz »

I think I prefer the like the first one. The second seems a little too squat and rounded.
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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by Sgt. Groovy »

"The" and probably "for" too will be scaled down. The layout is not complete yet, in any case I will have to modify both B and W.
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Re: The new Wesnoth logo and the Loyalist sigil

Post by beetlenaut »

I like the first one a lot more.
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