There’s been some spicy posts on alliance logos lately, I’m sure we’re all familiar with it. While there’s understandably a lot of ranting going on, what can we do to help improve the situation?
I’m not too sure what the players can do besides share their rejected and approved logos to try to get a better understanding of what CCP currently considers acceptable. What do other people think would help?
Here’s a copy of my post from reddit. Hopefully CPP will see it here.
Wow, this is a spicy thread! Its understandable that people are upset. Effective communication is important and there’s fundamentally none betwixt OP and CCP. Hope you get this worked out OP. I’m looking forward to seeing your alliance logo shown proudly in game soon!
Here’s some advice that will help CCP in this situation:
Clear communication with your customers. - This is just a fundamental part of business and really every part of life.
Provide examples of acceptable artwork. - I’ve studied the philosophy of beauty and I still am unable to clearly explain my personal taste in a wall of text like the official submission guidelines.
Use precise and detailed explanations when denying artwork. - E.g. The luminosity values in this image exceed the allowed maximum of X.
On a more personal note, it is sad to see CCP denying new alliances the the freedom of expression players have had in the past, choosing to enforce their personal (corporate) sense of taste. I really don’t see how this benefits anyone and as others have pointed out, the theme of logos we see past and present are reflected in realistic war-time situations which are much darker (dystopic) than space pewing.
All of these logos look fine to me. The middle one is my favourite and the last one is my least favourite. That’s just my personal subjective opinion though. If I ever made an alliance logo it would be a futuristic blue screen of death, nowhere near as good as any of these. We’re not all graphic artists doing free work for CPP.
Alliance logos should be designed so that they look and feel like they belong within the futuristic, dark and dystopian EVE universe.
Logos with themes like warfare, corporations, science and space have a higher chance of approval.
Reference to historical themes or imagery should be subtle. A well designed and modified version of a historical object that is designed to fit in the EVE Universe will in most case have a higher chance of approval than the definite interpretation of it.
Many concepts and ideas from earth have evolved or been forgotten in the EVE Universe. Remember this when designing your logo.
Common everyday motives/objects like mobile phones, modern guns, modern vehicles that fit poorly within the genre should be avoided.
An alliance logo is a symbol for a particular community of players who play the game together, it’s an identifier of a social group, not necessarily of some role playing theme - although those can and do exist in the sandbox.
The proviso that logos should refer to the “futuristic, dark and dystopian nature of New Eden” is perhaps where it goes wrong, if it is interpreted as anything more than “not using existing symbols from and references to the real world in terms of politics, religion, etc”. And perhaps it should be debated.
Additionally, it’s a community aspect. Perhaps the overall approval should not be handled by some higher up managers, but by community devs, after the necessary technical and copyright evaluation - as it used to be.
It’s very simple. In our EVE universe there probably aren’t any bananas nor tigers, they don’t fit in. And yes, perhaps CCP decided they had enough of the silly logos and changed their mind about what’s allowed or not. Hardly surprising.
My point is simple too: it shouldn’t be forced to fit in a New Eden that is undefined except for “dystopian” etc (absence of proof of tigers and bananas in New Eden is not proof they do not exist in any of the 7500+ systems).
A logo is a social symbol for players playing and identifying as a group. There is nothing inherently dystopian about playing together - unless you’re in the wrong group perhaps, lol. I see the logo as part of playing the game, not as part of the game we play. See the difference ?
If groups want to rally under a (silly) logo, let them have their fun ! What is silly for one, may be meaningful to them, make them bond better - not a negative thing, I would say. What if there is a bee with a kevlar helmet, a gnome with a shotgun, or a witch on a broomstick, or a top hat and monocle ?!
If logo submission becomes a lengthy process without guidance and constructive feedback (!), it defeats its purpose. In that case CCP should just generate the logos they find acceptable and make them available.
I can fully understand CCP wanting to keep some sort of control over what’s happening in their game, I can also see people disagreeing with it. Fact is, CCP set those rules and if you try even a little bit you can make it work.
It isn’t. There rules are right there, the logo I posted is the least idiotic of the 3 they submitted. None of those 3 would make it past “Reference to historical themes or imagery should be subtle” because “historical” is from EVE’s pov. The other requirement about “Many concepts and ideas from earth have evolved or been forgotten” applies here as well.
If as an alliance you read the rules, I assume… I mean there are a whole lot of lazy low IQ dumbasses, it is simply not possible to think any of those submissions would be allowed.
Yeah, this is my point. The guidelines are very subjective as all beauty / taste is.
Some people think that in all the planets in EVE there are no bananas or Tigers. Some people think there are. Some people think that a tiger riding a banana through a wormhole is a symbol of dystopic power and some do not.
Given how CCP is the one making the subjective decisions, I recommended they provide more clear communication on what is acceptable and what is not. But given how that is up to them, the point of the thread is to brainstorm what we can do to help the situation.
I’m glad the artwork was posted so we can start to get an idea of what is unacceptable, though it saddens me it was rejected. Any other ideas?
I think the ship has already sailed on “this is a dystopian universe, except for the bees, torpedoes, pandas, squids, random squiggles, sharks, trees, sailing ships, mangos, flowers, bears, rainbows, wolves, and popsicles we have already approved. Also, enjoy your pink Keepstar.” You can literally select a goose as one of your corp symbols, but they won’t approve a goose in an alliance symbol because there aren’t geese in Eve? What? If this was the standard all along, fine. To change it now, when Eve is subjectively the least grim and most carebear it’s ever been, seems ridiculous. Let people have fun.
That seems to be the complaint: vagueness of rules, loose interpretation and lengthy, arbitrary decision making. “Subtle” ? How is that quantifiable ?!
Perhaps the correct way to approve or refuse logos is to look at them as an average, non-judgmental New Eden inhabitant. Maybe a banana tickles their funny bone too. Maybe one of them found an old book, handed down many generations, with a drawing of an ancient battleship with huge guns sticking out…
If logos are within the eula/tos rules, and not a subject to copyrights, that would be good enough for me. They don’t all need to win prizes for design. Poor taste can be funny and identifiable too. Let them ! They’re not EvE artists who have to adhere to the company’s design credo, they’re customers invited to come with a symbol that represents their group identity.
But it isn’t about you or me. It’s about CCP who clearly changed the requirements going “yeah no, this is dumb”. If they had done it in a “subtle manner” (per the rules) perhaps it would have been fine.
This is one of the other two they submitted, please tell me you understand those didn’t make it through and there’s no “vagueness of rules” going on here.
I’m not an artist, by any standard In the above case my feedback would be “would you be okay with dropping the background and only keeping the creature ?”, regardless of what my appreciation of the result would be. It would be a technical evaluation (contrast in this case, and reducing visual clutter), not an artistic one, and certainly not a canonical one
And in a second round I would suggest to make the “creature” frontal, to increase impact, w/e. That would make the process more involved, for sure, and less of a “who’s the next artist we’re going to hire”.
That’s not supposed to be a modern kevlar helmet but rather a mix of an earlier steel helmet design used by an infamous central european army and designs used by it’s much less infamous imperial predecessor.
Their logo didn’t actually have a picture of a car in it. The play on words was the joke also I think Honda Accord might have been a name from the game Earth and Beyond. Anyway, this was their logo:
ah, AT nostalgia;
Colors should be chosen within the color range used in the EVE universe. That means colors should generally not be too saturated or bright or they will look like they belong in a different color space than the ship and its surroundings.
and has a combined pride flag with skin colour rainbow in the background?
Submission Style Requirements
Political symbolism may not be submitted for use as an alliance logo.
While I do think geese may be a bit out of place as a futuristic space corporation logo, the Caldari are known for using birds as a theme for their ship names.
I don’t know if the goose itself was the problem in that submission, it may be one of the other submission rules.
In the above case my feedback would be “would you be okay with dropping the background and only keeping the creature ?”, regardless of what my appreciation of the result would be. It would be a technical evaluation (contrast in this case, and reducing visual clutter), not an artistic one, and certainly not a canonical one 
