Northern Gaming Hub – the TL;DR edition

Let’s call this one the Wikipedia plot summary for those who don’t want to read the whole thing:

Once upon a time a designer decided to revisit an old job, and redesign it with his today’s skills, creativity and experience. He reworked the logo he’d designed, the headline, the image and all that jazz. It went from this… to this.

I guess I could have put a spoiler alert in there. Hah hah.

Okay that was the quick summation. It actually was a more involved process that took me the better part of the week. It was actually rather satisfying to bring to life, to reintroduce ideas I’d had but never explored twenty years ago, to bringing new things to the table that I probably couldn’t have done twenty years ago.

Chapter One: The Journey Begins
Wherein our interepid hero sets out to redevelop the Northern Gaming Hub logo. In true Hero’s Journey fashion, he attempts the easiest solution first, only to find it most unsatisfactory. Undaunted, he redoubles his efforts and sets out in earnest, crafting a solution he’s initially quite excited about. Throwing this new logo on an old poster, he realizes that the task at hand has a longer road ahead than he realized.

Chapter Two: The Journey Continues
Wherein our hero sets out again to redevelop the logo again, learning from what worked and didn’t from his first attempt. He introduces new things to the logo to tie it into its videogames origin and is initially most enamoured with his new solution. But, dark clouds gather on the horizon… there’s something about this new logo that is working less for him, and there’s something about the previous new logo that calls out.

Chapter Three: The Journey Continues More
Wherein our hero finds himself on a side quest… redeveloping the first poster he developed. Ressurecting old ideas, he introduces new ideas to come up with something much more visually impressive and thematically relevant. This side quest produces another side quest… to redevelop the headline. Our hero tries several things and thinks he’s found one that works… but he was self-deceived. This new solution won’t hold, even if he’s ready to declare this “good enough for now”.

Chapter Four: The Journey Continues to the Point Where It Ends
Wherein our hero takes a moment to hawk his wares like an NPC, before redoubling his efforts on the headline, and synthesizing the two generations of logo redevelopment into one new logo. In one final gift from the mentor (in this case, being the hero’s younger self), our hero revisits the earliest poster and realizes that not all from it must be discarded… he fuses what worked from the oldest into the best of the newest into something he can declare finished.

And thus our Shaggy Dog story endeth. A shaggy dog story is ultimately pointless and anti-climactic. In this case, there’s no actual client anymore and the job served no purpose…

Or did it?

I did get a demonstrable journey into my creative process for anyone interested in taking it with me. I actually got to play with my designing skills, logo skills, conceptual skills.

So, not. T’was not all for naught.

Thank you for taking this little journey with me.