New GUI and Visual identity

Intro

Hello everyone!
My name is Rafael (aka D3miurge).
I am a graphic designer and concept artist that contributes in an open project called Minecolonies (you can know more about the project here in this link: https://www.minecolonies.com/).

I would like to use this space to share the progress of my work with Minecolonies project.

Content

This time I will talk about the GUI and Visual identity I helped develop for Minecolonies.

What is a visual identity? In simple terms is the visual material used to define some sort of identification or information. In business, this can be used to give meaning to brands and logos. In games, however, (which is the case of Minecolonies) can be used to create GUIs, assigning them meaning through images, et cetera.

A hypothetical example: Every game menu (or GUI) referring to a function "A" can have greenish color while the function "B" can have bluish color. When a player see the greenish color he would know that he is dealing with the function "A", and a blueish color would refer to the function "B".

I decided to give our project a visual "lift", starting by a GUI for the central piece of Minecolonies, the town hall block (imbued with an new visual identity).

(town hall block above, preview from the modeller editor)

This was our old GUI:

Before I show the new GUI version, let me give some context: Minecolonies is about the player as the leader of a settlement or a colony. The town hall block is the object in game that would provide the heart of the colony, the administrative central structure in a newly created colony. The town hall block visually is a table with a large book over it (a visual representation of register book). Based on that I created the GUI below:

(Preview of the new Town Hall GUI presented to the develop team - scale ~200%)

(The original file created for the GUI - scale 100%)

(This is the result, from a game screenshot)

Guidelines/Inspiration

The book and paper graphic style is inspired by the Minecraft GUI book menu, to blend in the game harmoniously (book GUI from Minecraft below, Minecraft wiki courtesy).

The wax and ribbon from the GUI is very common in medieval documents and letters. Usually with a branded icon over the wax representing a seal of authenticity, like in the image below:

Conclusion

The new GUI was well received by our community, and it is really an improvement in comparison to the previous version.

(comparison between the old GUI on left, and the new GUI on right)

Not only the visual identity was good for the GUI, but it was also used as theme for our project website and forum.

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I hope you have liked the result in the same way I loved to work on it.

My best regard to our lovely community ♥
Rafael "D3miurge"

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Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

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