While Poems of the Night Watch is paying the bills, Tales from the Floating Vagabond is paying the karma forward, as it were. A dear friend introduced me to this wacky, obscure, off-the-wall roleplaying game in college, and to my utter delight, I met the game’s creator several years later and we too became friends. Lee Garvin was every bit as funny as his game and enlisted me to work on the second edition of Tales. Unfortunately, medical complications derailed the second edition and took Lee from the world before he had a chance to finish it. Now a handful of his friends are trying to finish his work.
It’s a daunting task, picking up a random assortment of half-finished files, notes, and interviews, and trying to assemble them into a coherent RPG. I’ve designed characters and character sheets, laid out small publications, and helped write games in the past, but I’ve never tried to bundle those skills into one book. Fortunately, I love variety, so today I’m sharing one of the many mini-projects that make up the book. Characters in Tales can join Unions for extra advantages (if they pay the dues) and among the files Lee left behind were some logos for the major unions. Sadly, the digital files won’t reproduce well in print, so I’m taking it upon myself to redesign all of them, because I love designing logos for imaginary things as much as I like giving myself extra work.
Tales from the Floating Vagabond pays homage to many classic action films, so for the police union, I wanted a Robocop/dystopian Big Brother feel. I always design logos in black & white first, since it enables me to really focus on the shape and typography. I’ve also found that people are SO particular about color that introducing it too early in the logo design process draws clients away from other aspects of the design. And really, any good logo should reproduce well in black & white.
I rarely have this much fun designing logos for real products or services! If you need a logo designed for a fake product, contact me!
