This is where the more broad digital parts of the piece come together.
Now that I have the characters and setting established the next step is to create the pieces that not only tie these together but also allow the user to interact with the product. This will be key UI components, type, use of colour and the overall brand of this work.
As I have already cemented, stylistically this project is pixellated, in effort to embody some classic games to hopefully link to that younger audience. With this in mind this will influence a large part of these pieces, think pixellated buttons and type.
I thought a good place to start would be the overall brand and identity of the product. I think here a constructive place to start would be to build on the satirical nature of the story. Seeing as it is The Department of Urban Betterment it could be a good idea to play on this and build the brand on existing government assets. This could be taking a logo or positioning itself how these public sector organisations do.
An idea I had would be to create a brand logo/wordmark using this method. If I could pixelise the uk government logo and pair it with my departments name and format it as the uk government does it would help reinforce that idea of satire and could piggy back on an existing brand so to speak. Here is what I came up with.
I am really happy with how this looks. I think it looks really legit and on brand for what I’m aiming for. With this piece behind me I am happy to move on to the next part of the digital development.
As you can see above I have already experimented with type for this. I am planning on using a pixelized font to match the rest of the work as I feel it would simply look off if I didn’t. Looking through different pixel fonts and I really just need something that is legible and pleasant here. With that in mind I settled on Pixelfy Sans the same type as shown above. It is worth noting I plan to use this type at -2px spacing.
As far as colour goes I don’t plan to use a lot so to speak, at least within any UI elements. For the likes of buttons I have toyed around with colour here but this colour will be the same for all buttons throughout, think of it more as a brand colour. The colours featured in the story are all just part of the world. Colour is shown as sort of transformational within the story as things become a lot brighter towards the end after good has been accomplished. But again as far as the I plan to stick with a single brand colour and build around it.
After playing around with colour I landed on using orange as the departments own brand colour. Specifically FF921E. This felt inoffensive and unassociated in regards to governmental departments so I felt it a good fit. It also stood out well on my existing assets.
