The importance of a good logo really can’t be understated. It’s often the first part of the game you see and it gives a visual impression of what you’ll experience. A good logo can attract you to a game and a bad one can turn you off to it completely. So it’s no surprise that we put a lot of work into designing one for Tau Station. We wanted to get it right, and it was worth the effort because we came up with a logo that we love.
Leila, the fearless leader of the Tau Station team, and Tania, our graphic designer, took the lead on the project. The two spent a couple of months bouncing ideas around as they tried to come up with a logo that represented the core of the game. “There was plenty of back and forth, and plenty of inspiration shared,” says Leila. Many of Tania’s early designs were colored by the intent to incorporate elements of the Catastrophe, the mysterious in-game event that brought humanity’s interstellar society to its knees. “The logo must be cosmic, futuristic, and tell us about the Catastrophe,” read Tania’s notes. “Tania proposed nine versions,” says Leila. “They were all connected to the Catastrophe and how all of the stations are in such a poor state.” Ultimately, neither Tania nor Leila felt that the proposed logos really fit the game. You could see the destruction in them, but not space or science fiction.
To better clarify the style they were going for, they spent some time looking at logos from a number of other science fiction games and television shows, including Shattered Horizon and The Expanse. From there Tania shifted to designs that included space and the galaxy more in their themes. She designed another batch of logos that were closer, but still not quite there. Many of us on the team loved several of the new samples but there was some concern that the colors and shapes had too much of a 1980s feel to them. So Leila and Tania decided to refine them even further, and Tania went back to the design board.
They experimented with a variety of ideas: asteroid imagery, “station parts,” graceful lettering, planetary orbits. As Leila puts it, “Tania is a perfectionist. She was very willing to find the right one.” Ever persistent, Tania produced yet another fresh batch of logos that finally contained the winner: white lettering over a globe, with an orbiting moon and a star-filled background. It’s sleek, it’s attractive, it’s clearly sci-fi, and it conveys the themes of space and exploration that are at the heart of the game that Tau Station will be.