A word from Tomizawa

Hello everyone, I’m Tomizawa.

Since we announced “Tales of Arise” time went so fast and now August is nearly over. This summer, we have been discussing and doing test-play with our Arise dev team. While doing these sessions, I realize that the game is becoming better every day. I will continue to do my best.

By the way, I was thinking about what today’s behind-the-scenes story of Arise could be, and I want to introduce some background stories of the “title logo” symbolizing the title.  I talked about how the title “Tales of Arise” had been decided on previous blog. To be honest, determining the final “logo” also required various criteria and creativity which entails subtle tweaks.

For example, this title logo has 2 decisive differences from past “Tales of” series in terms of its designing manner. Can you tell what the differences are?

Yes, first obvious one is the flat colors. With this simple logo featuring white, without color gradation or emboss, we aimed to express lucidness and strength. This kind of flat designed logos are becoming more common driven by current trend of communication design.

One of the reasons behind this choice was visibility or possibility for general use given that this will be used globally.

In addition, my personal idea which brought me to select flat design was since such as color or atmosphere which are more and more enriched in recent games, the simpler logo could enhance the both of game content and the logo.

On the other hand, since the policy of “Tales of” is “to let people imagine the lore of the work and move their feeling”, just making it flat wasn’t enough. Crucially important is how you hide title’s element behind the logo.

For the production of the logo for Tales of Arise, we made partnership with Wataru Osakabe from Lovedesign Inc. He is talented designer who recently acted as visual designer for the anime “Sarazanmai” by director Kunihiko Ikuhara. We have shared information about title’s lore and story elaborately and started to struggle to integrate them with “flat yet emotional” title logo.

After narrowing various ideas down to the prototype of current design, it took months of time of really subtle tweaks to finally complete it. I remember that we adjusted the placement of granules emitted from the arc through “AR” by minor than 1mm difference.

And there is one thing more we poured our energy into; the background emblem.  This is our first attempt to use a transparent emblem in “Tales of” series.

Actually, transparent logos are a bit disliked by the promotion team, because when using it they have to consider the consistency with background, which demands more careful layout.

However, this choice is, once again, for the sake of unified visual information which consists of enriched game expression, simple title logo, and the emblem bridging those two.

So, I requested the cooperation of the promotion teams claiming my belief “Just putting the logo onto screenshot is communication design!”.

Just picking the logo up has let me talk about people’s spirits and decisions behind it.

Looking back to logos of past “Tales of” series, we can sense the atmosphere of those days and the spirit of those creators strongly.

With every entry in the “Tales of” series, the logo has changed to match the spirit of the game and this logo should also reflect that for “Tales of Arise”.

I think we should we call it a day with reminiscing about past title logos here. I’m sure you could feel the history and spirits that are alive in each logo. Since there are over 40 titles for “Tales of” series, reprint and transplant editions aside, showing all of them would take some time!

I would like to know: do you have a memorable logo?

I hope you all may envision the various feelings for the logo of “Tales of Arise” after you played.

Tomizawa – Producer of “Tales of Arise”