As of tonight, the Wookieepedia is using a logo that I made. It's possible that I am far too excited over this.

Making graphics for a fairly high-traffic website is part of my day job, and I see my icons all over the internet, but this is something else entirely. For one, I actually got real crit and input from the community and then - voting! It led to a much better final product - I really resisted the use of the traditional logo font for STAR WARS - but it turned out adding much more variety to the image. And it worked without looking too fan arty, always my fear when the logofont is involved.

No, it's not totally original - My first pass actually had Wookiees, because I whipped it up in a matter of minutes without too much thought, but it was requested to stick with the Death Star II concept of the original, as it symbolizes the wiki quite well - not finished, but operational enough to get the job done. But the old logo only said 'The Star Wars Wiki' (in the big, blocky logo font) and the community wanted to use their official name.

There was no way I was going to use the block font for the whole thing, though - for one, 'Wookieepedia' is just too long a word for it when you have to keep the size at 133 pixels! And secondly, I believe that the block font is best used sparingly. Very sparingly. Unless you're a professional typographer (and I am most definitely not) the only thing it should be used for is the phrase STAR WARS. Anything else, especially with all the fan-made versions floating around, just don't look right to me.

So for my main text, I went with Episode I, a fan-made serif based on the font used in the prequel titles. I feel it's the best looking of all the fan reproductions, and it projects 'Star Wars' without smacking you over the head with it.

I cut out my own DSII from a (much) larger version of the photo in this entry, adding a slight background shadow to soften the sharp edges - they tend to look less mechanical and more sloppy at small sizes. Taking the text treatment from my first logo and tweaked it a bit, eventually adding the block font (SF Distant Galaxy, with some Photoshopping to make it look more like the real thing.)

Even if the version up now isn't the final one, it's still pretty damn cool. I have a few minor fixes to make before I send Whiteboy the final PNG, but overall I'm pleased. They like it! They really like it!

(And I can't believe how much I wrote on this. Do I miss college or what?)