Evolution of the Wolfire Logo

Inspired by Anton Riehl's post in the Wolfire forums, I thought it would be fun to revisit the original design process for the Wolfire logo. We started with this image I designed for the original Wolfire site:

We needed a new logo that is more simple and recognizable -- one that uses only two colors and reads well even from far away. Here was one of the first tries:

We thought the flaming wolf in a circle was a good idea, but there was a lot of work left to do! First, there was much too much detailing, giving an overall messy look. Here it is with some of the detail removed:

This is much cleaner, but the wolf shape is not particularly compelling -- it could just as well be a sea lion or a mossy rock. We needed a more iconic wolf silhouette, like this one:

This is starting to look pretty cool! However, the little moon kind of throws off the balance of the logo, and adds too much complexity. What if we just replace the big circle with the crescent moon shape?

That immediately looked a lot better -- the broad base gave some weight to it, and the narrow tips directed to the wolf's head without competing with it. However, after experimenting with the flames a bit, we decided they looked better facing down like this:

And that's the final logo! Thanks to everyone who helped create it, especially Jesse Holden and Ian Wells.