Logo Project – PlayStation

The PlayStation is an extremely popular series of video game consoles manufactured, marketed and owned by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The iconic PlayStation logo was first publicly introduced in Japan, it was created the third of December in 1994 by a Japanese designer named Manabu Sakamoto. Later released in North America in September 1995, and Australia in November 1995.  This Japanese designer, not only created the logo he had also worked on other logos for Sony products to such as VAIO.

VAIO

Sakamoto also designed the custom typeface used in the Playstation logo.The typeface itself was conceptualized by Manabu Sakamoto,  many can assume that designer was inspired, that the font used for the lettering is very similar to a font called Zrnic Light designed by Ray Larabie. Both have similar traits of typography but it is unsure if the designer used this idea or not.

FONT

Before Playstation was introduced the logo had been in development, more than a few dozen logo concepts were submitted for the final approval, since then the PlayStation logo certainly became one of the most popular and instantly recognizable logos in the gaming arena. There were many weird designs, some seemed like a funky 50’s vibe, while others were plain and simple. The designer wanted to make a long to become outdated, timeless. The logo has always been seen with two letters P and S and with the four colors, the P is colored red, while the S has a three- color pattern of yellow, green and blue. The reason why it’s always been P and S, was because it meant for Playstation. The President of Sony, Norio Ohga, was reportedly furious at the termination of the partnership (Nintendo) and got Ken Kutaragi to develop the PlayStation Project in order to compete against Nintendo. That is how playstation came to be.

LOGO CONCEPT

The reason why the Playstation’s logo had to be changed several times before becoming the final logo, was so that their marketing and advertising pushes the boundaries and keeps the brand in the public eye. once they found the perfect logo, it hasn’t been any different ever since. This strong logo has carried the PlayStation brand to global success, and is now one of the most recognized logos in the world. Changing little in over 20 years from its initial concept, the strength of the PlayStation brand has outstripped even the Sony brand itself, with the product becoming bigger than the company who created it. So much so, that PlayStation as a brand now dwarfs all Sony’s other operations and is easily the most important part of the business.The Colors used in the design stand for “brilliance, passion, joy, charm and elegance”. Now the current PlayStation logo is often seen in a black and white color palette, giving it a very clean , smooth feeling look.

FINAL LOGO

It’s hard to tell whether or not the playstation logo has influenced other logo companies, but there may be a chance that the Playstation logo itself may have been inspired by none-other Sun Microsystems. It is no coincidence that both logos have identical features, such as the fact that the Sun’s logo, which features four interleaved copies of the word sun in the form of a rotationally symmetric ambigram which is similar to the Playstation logo. The symmetric ambigram is literally breaking the ‘s’ into two components, those components however look identical to the letter S in the playstation logo. Once again this is just a theory, probably the PlayStation logo was not inspired but it’s cool that both logos have similar traits.

LOOK ALIKE