Okay, show of hands!  Who hasn't started working on their webcomic/videogame/book/whatever yet?

Okay, those of you with your hands up, keep them up.  Okay, out of all of you, who already has their logo and stuff ready to go?

Okay, everyone whose hands have dropped, we'll meet you on the other side of the jump.  For the ones who haven't….

….what are you thinking?

The fact is, despite what you may have in mind or may plan for your work, what you start out with may look worlds different from what you have on launch day.  Let me give you some examples:

• Team Fortress 2 started out as a direct sequel to its military-themed predecessors before the design team settled on a faux-1960s World Domination theme.
• Episode VI of the Star Wars saga was originally named Revenge of the Jedi and was only a couple of weeks away from release before George Lucas realized Jedis were not about revenge; the title was soon changed to its final version, Return of the Jedi.
• The cover of the Beatles' album Yesterday and Today was so shocking to US censors at the time that the cover was completely changed for the US market; some already-released albums had stickers with the new artwork slapped onto them.
• Waverly St. Claire's novel But This I Must went during the course of its writing from a hard-boiled detective noir story to a complete comedic send up of the noir, western and time travel genres.

What do these all have in common?  Original art was done ahead of time and was done in by circumstances that forced changes to what became the final art.  In all cases none of the creators involved had thought it through.  And in quite a few cases, it bit them in the proverbial rear.  With miscolored lightsabers.

What lesson does this mean for you? It means that while you develop your work, it's okay to work on the branding/identity, but don't expect it to remain the same throughout.  There will be changes.  Some will be big, some will be small, but they will be there.

I'll give you an example.  Four years ago, when we set aside our original series, we went with an idea that Ayne had regarding a male and female team of soldiers of fortune.  They weren't lovers, just partners.  The characters were named "Claude" and "Monet" (at the time, we weren't sure who was who) and as I began to flesh out the idea, I decided to make a cute little graphic to show the concept.

Fast forward about four months.  I thought, maybe it'd be a good idea if I made it look less like something thrown randomly together in Photoshop and replace it with something actually thrown together in Photoshop.  At the time I was switching graphic suites and feeling my way around Adobe products; meanwhile we'd finally sorted out that Claude was the guy (ya think?) and that Monet was the girl; we also needed a reason to refer to her as such rather than a first name, which we then added.  To reinforce the fact that Claude and Monet were not lovers, we added a new character, Miki. 

It was at this time that we started using the second-gen Claude & Monet logo on the website.

Jump to about a year later.  After a slew of "me-too" soldier of fortune indie comics, web comics and manga, we needed to make a significant change, as we didn't want to blend into the crowd.  We wanted to flesh out the team beyond just three main characters (not counting the heavies) and thus Yim-Fong and Oi-Fong were added to the team (see the second and third entries on this series as to how that turned out.)  Also, we added a team supervisor so that we wouldn't get this turned into a harem comedy; it also added additional influences of Ghost in the Shell.  Lastly, we made the decision to go from the modern day to a sci-fi setting, both because it gave us extra flexibility in storytelling as well as the fact that it dovetailed with a novel I was writing that could be set in the same universe.

What that meant was that the above logo needed to be tweaked a bit to meet a more futuristic standard.  I liked the curviness of the Claude type, but had to change the font due to the fact that said font file corrupted on me; also, the Monet portion needed to be upgraded.  Plus, I've always been partial to the ligature ampersand than the modern one, so I went with a variant of that.  Finally, as both Ayne and I wanted a cleaner logo, we tossed the Photoshop versios and went with an all-new one made in Illustrator.

About a year or so ago, we started to add the flourishing touches to the work.  Because Ayne and I are huge fans of the art deco and streamline modern art styles, and considering that architecture tends to be cyclic, we reasoned that there would be a deco revivalist period, and that great deco cities like New York and Los Angeles (yes, you heard that part), we decided to add deco influences to the logo.  Chrome went in, and the names were spread out per streamline modern aesthetics.

Finally, as we came closer to the final design, I added a whimsical touch of "orbits" to indicate that this was a sci-fi series.  I also changed the color of the "Claude" portion back towards the red scale because the blue was not working well against various backgrounds.  And thus, we came up with the final logo.

What, did I say final logo?  Hardly.  The truth is, in many cases, logos are living, dynamic things.  Some logos that work great for print may not work for film, or even for print in other countries: compare the original Japanese Ranma 1/2 logo with the first "official" English one produced by Shogakukan, and then the early Viz one and the anime/final "official" English one, also by Viz. And some constantly change with tastes and the times:

That is why your final logo needs to wait almost until the final bell has rung.  Otherwise, you just might be wasting your time, or at getting the experience of building upon the earlier versions until you get it right.

Tomorrow: Day 3 – Oh My Stars and Garters: Networking