New banner? If so, what should it be?

[sotnoose]

Hello folks! Just an idea really. In your opinion, do we need a new banner as a crew? And if so, what should it be?

I was just experimenting and made this: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/332525745953832962/364490848986988545/ETCL_Logo_Adv.png?width=972&height=415

Please tell me what you think about it. Again this is only an idea. 🙂

– Sotnoose/SotGoose

[jeffrey]

I am not sure about the text, but we have been using the current banner for a while. I am not saying I don’t like it anymore but we could change it up again. To be honest, I don’t mind one or the other, so if people don’t like it, don’t change it. We could also do a slideshow again but with some more pictures this time 😛

[mathilya]

First of all, I would like to state that all I wrote below is just my opinion – back in my primary school, I had quite bad marks from artistic lessons 😛

I like this banner. It is something fresh and reviving. Props for the effort – as I said already in PM, I’m sure you poured your whole heart into creating it. The wooden background is also very cool. I see you picked warm colors, also our “ethical lady” got some warmth and slight hue of of brown is present on crew label. The font you used also matches the whole image.

Now I will move to slogan. It is catchy and reminds some kind of fraternity. It connects our crew title words with short, yet nicely written sentences. However, IMHO it sounds more like TV advertisement. If I were you, I would go for a variation of crew motto, written on SC wall. To remind:

Always polite, friendly, helpful, respectful and sharing

And one more thing – our crew policy expects all players to behave like ethical players, so IMHO we should not give anyone an option to be non-ethical 😉

Concluding, I sign under jeff’s words about slideshow. I don’t mind having 2 images (or more) and presesnt them as a slideshow. That might be a kind of compromise, so we can see how is this banner looking on blog.

[Roofstone]

Math has a good idea there. A slideshow sounds like it could be fun, and opens up for future additions. He also has a good idea for the writing with our slogan, so I am behind him on that one.

[mattiejas]

As others have said, props for the effort! It’s not easy to make a good banner. Some feedback follows, and I hope that this stimulates your creativity rather than stopping it!!

The good:

* warmth
* humour
* quality texture
* natural lighting, attention for detail
* logo (approximately) in the right place

The issues (I’m trying to be constructive, again, please see this as ways you could bolster your creativity!):

* too much symmetry: although some of it is broken through the subtle lighting, the vertical pattern is visually quite boring (e.g. rule of thirds, http://www.companyfolders.com/blog/rule-of-thirds-graphic-design )
* a wooden panel doesn’t quite capture the imagination of the viewer (at least for me)
* the banner feels too “retro” (I was trying to find a better word; I don’t know how else to say this)
* text must convey the message that we stand for; although the one you picked is funny, in a way it conveys the opposite
* even more, there shouldn’t be any text on the banner image itself as it won’t show properly on all resolutions after cropping, best leave the text to the html part of the banner (as it is now)
* rockstar logo feels inappropriate (doesn’t fit the style of the rest of the banner, cropping issues, potential copyright issues, and also I could see that we might branch out to other games too, for instance quite a few of us play a lot of Payday 2, and maybe if similar games like GTA 5 come out we might try to enjoy them as well as a crew)
* our actual logo isn’t coloured, so for consistency of branding, I’d say the logo on the banner shouldn’t be coloured either

Some technicalities (all easily fixable):

* wordpress banner resolution should be 1170×500
* logo too large and not vertically centered properly, won’t look ok when the banner is cropped as wordpress does
* the banner image should look alright no matter how it is cropped: the layout we have in the current banner works well (and took quite a bit of effort to get right), it shows the logo and the logo doesn’t interfere with the html text, so I’d suggest to stick with that layout, i.e. an image that looks ok no matter how it is cropped, with the logo on top of it at the location as it is now; perhaps other layouts would work too, but it would require some experimentation

Concerning a slider with multiple pictures, we used to have that. However, it slows down the site quite a lot (the server needs to deliver all images at once), and perhaps more importantly it also leads to weaker “branding” if you like, detracts from the content, and confuses visitors (here’s some good reading: https://thrivethemes.com/why-sliders-suck/ ). For these reasons I think that a single but really good and strong image, as we have now, works better.

For the record, you can find the logo in vector format (i.e. infinite resolution) and the current banner in full resolution here:

https://www.ethicalretinue.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/bw.svg
https://www.ethicalretinue.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/83-etcl-leather.jpg

My feeling is that the current one is much better than your suggestion, because it is a really original, strong, and enticing image, reflecting our “brand” pretty well.

Nevertheless, sotnoose, thanks for the effort! I hope you find my comments useful. Maybe they will give you some ideas.

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