How we landed on a winking logo
Five logo ideas, one letter K, and why a face that winks at you won.
Our old logo was a lime-green K inside a thin orbit ring. It was fine on a dark background and got lost everywhere else. When the site became warm and light, it had to go.
The brief we gave ourselves
- It has to be a K, or at least read as one.
- It should feel like games: playful, a little bit of character.
- It has to work at 16 pixels, as a browser tab icon, and on both light and dark backgrounds.
Five directions
We sketched five ideas and put each one through the same test: big, next to the wordmark, on a dark background, and at favicon size.
- Pixel K: an 8-bit K where one pixel pops off like a coin. Very “game”, a bit expected.
- Wink: a face whose straight eye and winking eye spell K.
- Cursor K: the K’s lower leg is a mouse pointer. Clever for web work, less for games.
- Toy blocks: a K stacked from three coloured blocks. Modern, but a little generic.
- Spark K: the K’s arm ends in a sparkle, a nod to the AI side of how we work.
Why the wink won
The wink is the only one that’s a letter and a character at the same time. Cover the smile and you see a K: a straight line and a <. Add the smile and it becomes a little mascot looking back at you.
It also says something about how we want to come across. A wink is friendly and a bit cheeky. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is about right for a small studio that loves games.
Practically, it held up best at small sizes too. The yellow tile carries its own contrast, so it looks the same on cream and on our dark theme, and the face still reads at 16 pixels.
The final mark is a simple SVG: one rounded square, one bar, one chevron, one curve and two blush dots.
