How We Designed the SPOOKIES Logo (Patreon)

Horror has always been our second love. 

The first series we made together that wasn’t a FromSoft game was Resident Evil. RE7 followed and a few Halloween specials, too. So we knew we wanted to continue that on RKG.

SPOOKIES is the place on RKG where we’ll play the scariest games together. When we were developing the show, we wanted to design a logo that was striking yet simple – something that echoed a thousand horror movies without slipping into full-on parody.

Below is a little potted version of its development we want to share with you, our Producers. This year we want to share these little extras just with you, as we think you’ll appreciate these little things the most. 

Initial Stages

The first stage, as always, is about chucking down as many ideas as possible. Whether its something you love specifically or something that just generally feels like a step in the right direction.

For the initial round on SPOOKIES, these ranged from old EC horror comic covers with their lurid illustration and bold colours to bold and blocky title treatments across 60-80s horror movies. (We've left Krupa & Gav's research notes on some of the design panels for you to get a sense of how we work in these initial stages)

We also circled around other, more specific ideas. What about if the Let’s Play itself felt haunted. Imagine watching a Let’s Play and feeling like it was cursed? So we threw in The Ring and Ghostwatch, both of which use a CRT aesthetic and interference to represent ghostly presences.

Second Round

The second round is all about zeroing in on a couple of ideas. We loved the ‘haunted Let’s Play’ idea but perhaps it’s too hard to convey and maybe isn’t as striking as some of the other options.

We decided to focus on the bold title treatments, with interesting bold fonts. But also Psycho’s title treatment, which through a fractured title treatment implied something about its lead character. Norman Bates suffers a psychical break, and that’s elegantly embodied by that treatment. SPOOKIES isn’t Psycho – don’t worry, we’re well aware of that – but it’s all about building up tension and breaking it through a scare or having a laugh. So we wanted to pursue that as well.

So our wonderful designer – Ryan Quintal, who's worked with us on the look of RKG and our shows from beginning – came back with a bunch of potential typefaces.

Third Round

We picked a couple of the fonts we liked the most. Ryan then went away and worked up treatments of these which pointed in a few different horror directions – modern horror movies, some very famous horror titles treatments, and the broken up Psycho one we liked.

Final Idea

Some of those treatments are really fun. But ultimately homage felt too close to parody, and having something that just brought to mind The Exorcist or The Fly we felt was too limiting.

So we decided on Chelsea Market, which is the font behind SPOOKIES. It's irregular but also bold and we went for a version that we could shatter apart, implying something about the nature of the show.

Ryan worked up some colour version using the RKG palette, but ultimately we decided to keep it simple.

That's how we arrived at the logo you see on each thumbnail and at the top of every episode. We hope it evokes some classic horror movies but that it also stand by itself as a cool bit of design.

RKG x