Making a Logo is HARD

How did we come up with the SideWinder logo?  Wow, sometimes I wonder that myself.  Not that I don't like it (I really do) but it was insanely hard work.  I didn't really think it would be easy, but I figured we'd have a couple of iterations and nail something down fairly fast.  It ended up taking months and it involved major contributions from an internal designer and two external firms.

Why so hard?  I didnt' really understand it until well after the decision process was over, but I think I know now.  Try answering this question:  "What does gaming mean to you?"  OK, got it?  Now the next one: "What symbol represents all the stuff that gaming means to you?"  OK, got that one?  Now for the last one:  "What does gaming mean to *us* (the Microsoft Hardware gaming team) and what symbol represents enought of what each of us thinks so that everybody can like it?"  As if answering the first two questions individually wasn't hard enough, we needed to do it as a team!  In the end, it was an awesome process.  It wasn't easy, but defining what gaming means to us shouldn't be easy.  We had great conversations about what gaming is (hardcore? casual? fun? competitive? fantasy? immersion? distraction?...) and how to embody that in a symbol.  I really grew to like my colleagues more through having those conversations because they made each of us get out there with our desires for the gaming business.  Those conversations were exactly the things we should keep on the front of our minds.

 Next post:  some of the icons that didn't make it...