Adaptive Realms is a New England-based independent games studio, making roleplaying games. The team is small, passionate, and dedicated, and I was recommended by Mountaintop Studios to them to help draft up an identity for the studio, as well as a website to help launch the brand.
Initial designs involved “digitized nature” environments, so early drafts involved leaves dissolving into pixels
Fitting in nature elements in a different way, instead presenting the logo as a kind of “window” lined by houseplants and vines.
Taking the use of “realms” literally, using the larger text to create a portal into other lands.
Kerning and spacing corrections after a round of feedback and tinkering.
The wordmark and identity were created by me, after extensively interviewing the founders and working out their preferences. The team wanted the latitude to be able to create roleplaying games in any time period and era - be it swashbuckling pirates or futuristic fantasy-scifi, and they were most interested in thestyle of companies like Blizzard Interactive, while trying to stay stylistically clean.
The team wanted a warm color palette that wasn’t over-the-top.
Showcasing the adaptability of the new logo to different forms of presentation, depending on the genre of the game.
Following our settling up a general identity and wordmark, I brought in Zach Turcich to create the lovely tree-on-a-floating-island logo that brings it all together, giving him feedback and art direction.
A horizontal variation on the logo, created in collaboration with Zach.
For the direction of the website, Paul Iribe, the founder, directed me to find a warm aesthetic that would work well with dark mode, without being overwhelmingly orange. He also enjoys nature imagery, and I wanted to take advantage of one of the earlier drafts of the wordmark he enjoyed to present a visual sense of “realms” to immerse visitors.
A wireframe showing the potential layout of the website, making use of natural imagery in order to create a warm, welcoming environment, while also allowing the team to wait on sharing concept art before the title is prepared.