Playstation Logo design from Manabu Sakamoto Essay
Rondell Ramkissoon
CDMG 1111
Research Paper Logos
Playstation Logolution
Sony’s Playstation video game console logo has been through many changes throughout the years of its existence and throughout each generation of the Playstation console. In its early form of its logo it featured 3 ovals of different colors (yellow, red, and blue) falling on each other which didn’t last a very long time, switching many times from using shapes to type faces. All of the Playstations logos were designed by Japanese artist Manabu Sakamoto. The current logo is the letter p and s in a ligature with the s behind the p in black and white. The latest logo is now the best design playstation has and all the previous logos helped develop the beauty of this logo.
Sakamoto went through a lot of logo designs when the Playstation was first conceptualized focusing on the colors red, yellow, green, and blue that represent joy, passion, brilliance, and elegance in his eyes. However in the final design he scrapped the colors from the logo focusing on the black and white look that it has today. In the early days of Playstation, Nintendo was the big gaming company and in order to compete with Nintendo, Playstation needed to look good to the audience in order to get customers and a following. The PS logo with the colors was used in the first 3 generations of Playstation, the Playstation 1, 2 and 3. However in the PS4 color was removed. In the developing stages of the logo Sakamoto came up with many failed attempts at a logo but they all had a similar theme using the letters P and S with the use of the same colors with the exception of a couple going for a black and white look. A lot of simple shapes were used to create the many logos ideas there are. Simple design choices were used such as ligatures and colors. There was a few logos where he tried to make a book with the letters P and S changing around the colors. All the typefaces Sakamoto used were his original design for the specific project for Playstation. The typeface was a simple design focusing on the P and the t in the word Playstation. The P was a continuous line not connecting to the stem of the letter and the t had the left side of the cross gone. The typeface was really geometric having hard corners and round edges throughout each letter form. The use of negative space was a really clever design choice from Sakamoto which disconnected the P and the S giving a minimalistic approach to the logo.
The logo for Playstation today is the best logo to come out of Sakamoto. It took a ton of trial and error to come up with his idea as he even stated that he hated the first versions of the logo. “I’m always looking back at my early logo designs concepts and laughing at how awful they are.” Although they were good attempts at a logo he doesn’t acknowledge them as good in the slightest which is good for a designer always coming up with new and better logos that will resonate with consumers. Today everyone can recognize the Playstation logo and we all Sakamoto to thank for that. The logo is a beautiful work of art that captivates its consumers, which is the exact objective that Playstation was aiming for. With the huge following that Playstation has the logo was a success but also the actual software that its advertising works really well.
