It’s been almost three months since I’ve done anything with Winterwind. You could say this announcement was a “make work” project. But I had fun. That counts for something. It’s almost spring so I thought… “Spring cleaning at Winterwind… time for a new logo…”
I’m not a photographer or graphic designer. While I see the image I want clearly in my mind the camera, or program, doesn’t always seem to see the same thing. Still, my wife likes the new logo/banner though, so that’s alright!
In making a new one I waxed a little nostalgic and took a look at the old logos/banners we’ve had over the years. We launched in December, 2003! Wow! That’s damn near ancient internet days!
2003
Winterwind launched its old forums a few months before launching the website. It was a fairly natural step since Winterwind was more or less born on the old Interplay/Black Isle Studios message boards. Most of Winterwind’s team were former Interplay/Black Isle moderators and a lot of Black Isle developers were some of Winterwind’s first registered forum members.
The original forum logo was made by Joseph Cousineau aka BicycleofDeath, a good and, almost 20 years later now, officially “old” friend of mine. If you enjoy gaming and/or metal you should check him out. https://www.twitch.tv/bicycleofdeath
As I recall, we kept the forum logo all the way through from 2003 until I closed them in 2020.
2004
Winterwind’s website launched in the spring of 2004, with an artist’s profile, an interview with Obsidian Entertainment about their game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and the first of a few articles written for Winterwind by my friend, and former Black Isle dev, Damien Foletto.
We wanted a different logo and look for the site but I don’t remember who made it. I think it had to be me or Winterwind’s other Joseph, Mr. Cousineau. The Nordic feel of the font makes me think he did it but the background image and gradient fade on the sides was typical of my images back then although… It may have been Magnus or Mattias, who also wrote for the site and did some of the images.
2005
Over the years there were several versions of the site, six, I think counting the current version. This logo was the longest serving one. I know this one was mine. I took the picture in the woods behind Alma College, a now gone place in my former home town. There’s a bit of history there. It was in a movie or two and even has its own Wikipedia entry. Damned shame it burned down.
I even used a picture of Alma College for the cover of one of our ezine issues a few years later. You can see why it was in the movies…
Anyhow, back to the logos, I took the picture and did the text. It was the beginning of my love affair with the Copperplate Gothic font. Heh. In digging through old folders for the various logos I found an old screen shot of the site…
I only ever used IE as a browser for checking the look of the site when we made changes. And wow, in 2012 I didn’t have Chrome. I almost remember life before it. Ha! We even had a PayPal button and Amazon ads as well as Adsense back then. Crazy times!
2013
Winterwind has had a hiatus or two over the years. The first was a gap year from December 2011 until December 2012. When we officially relaunched in 2013 we knew links in signatures on forum profiles weren’t going to cut it for promoting our writers and articles anymore. It was time for social media.
I’m not a social media guy. Wasn’t then, never really will be either. But you have to be if you want to be seen/heard/read. “If you build it, they will come…” doesn’t work in the world of the interwebs. So, in the spring of 2013 the Facebook and Twitter accounts were created. And barely touched. But we needed a banner for the profile pages.
I grabbed a free use image, added the text with a cool ice filter, used a brush to make the moon and lens flares for the sun and “morning star” and thought I was pretty damned cool. And six months later the site went on a six year hiatus.
2019
When I decided to dust off the site and relaunch (again) in 2019 it was time for another new look. They say branding helps, and it should be consistent so I wanted to have the same logo/banner used on the site and its social media platforms. Which is a pain when each platform has its own banner dimensions and neither the site logo nor social media banners at the time worked everywhere.
The old images were done in PhotoShop and I’d switched to GIMP. For the amount I use an image editing program spending hundreds of dollars vs free, well, what can I say? GIMP is great! Seriously.
I found another free use image of a wintery scene, picked a new font and added “The Arts, Pop Culture & Social Issues” as a tag line. And switched the sides the fake sun and fake moon were on. Pretty clever, yeah?
2022
And now, here we are in 2022 and I wanted something new…
There’s a particular bench along the Thames Valley Parkway that I love. I’ve been hiking and cycling along that river since I moved to London and that bench, sitting on top of a little hill, and the creepy trees around it, is my favourite spot to stop. I even filmed a little filler video there last September, trying to kickstart myself into writing again. When I was there a few weeks ago I took a picture…
It’s not a particularly good picture. It’s just a quick snap with my smartphone but with some filters added, it looks almost not bad.
I changed the tagline from “The Arts, Pop Culture & Social Issues” to “Music, Comedy & Social Commentary”. The former fits when there are other writers contributing but when it’s just me, I’m a singer-songwriter that writes a review or two, a humour article here and there and dabbles in comedy sketches so the latter seems more apt now.
I even rekindled my love of Copperplate Gothic, bringing it back after few years away. But I had to use light instead of bold. With social media platforms having drastically different banner dimensions, it can get annoying aiming for one-size-fits-all image. Seriously…
Facebook banner dimensions: 820×312 pixels
Twitter banner dimensions: 1500×500 pixels
YouTube banner dimensions: Ha! See below!
YouTube is the trickiest of the lot. It requires the largest size but will almost always use the smallest and that makes text tricky. To quote directly…
- Minimum dimension for upload: 2048 x 1152 px with an aspect ratio of 16:9.
- At the minimum dimension, the safe area for text and logos: 1235 x 338 px. Larger images may get cropped on certain views or devices.
With YouTube, your image needs to fit mobiles, tablets, computers and TVs. And honestly, I’ve never watched a YouTube video on a TV, only a PC or smartphone.
It’s kind of a drag that the full size of anyone’s banner will never be seen by most users. I don’t have YouTube’s figures, but I’d have to guess most people aren’t watching from their televisions, which requires the largest banner size, but from mobiles or desktops.
Like I said, it’s not the greatest picture but with a couple of filters… it’s kind of cool. And I love those trees. They deserve to be seen!
I blame Star Trek for that.
(Star Trek 1966-2005 RIP)
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