Appreciating the Need for Speed Logo
Ahhh.. the need for speed, one of the few things that satisfied the need for speed of your childhood. We used to race against the speedometer with utmost joy and passion. But today, I’m not going to rant about the gameplay of NFS, but about its logo.
THE original NFS logo was just a simple text saying ‘need for speed’ with the bottom of the letter ‘s’ having stretched towards the first ‘d’. I believe this old logo is pretty dope for its time, to begin with. This logo has been used in the NFS franchise until the need for speed Carbon and it did quite well.
The legendary change sparked with the need for speed undercover title. The creators introduced a new NFS logo with a new kind of a font, which was later identified and known as the NFS font. This font brought an unconventional letter design with a mixture of upper case and lower case. Not very interesting right? WRONG! As I said earlier, this is a spark that created a bonfire.
After undercover, the world-famous franchise got a new logo design, followed by the ‘need for speed’ text from undercover. Let’s dive deep into this weird boxy logo of NFS.
The hidden ‘n’
If you could look at the letter ‘n’ and the boxy logo for several 10 seconds, it’ll occur to you that there’s a hidden ‘n’ in that boxy logo. Hope you have noticed it. The original designers seem to have kick-started the designing process with simply the ‘n’. From the point of my design view, having some influence from their previous text logo for the icon-type logo will help them in infinite ways of animating the logo. It is quite important factor to be considered when you are a video game franchise.
But here’s something weird!
The icon- logo doesn’t actually has an ‘n’ from the NFS font. The following image shows that it’s actually a stretched version of the NFS font. First I thought they are going for a stretched box but actually it’s cannot be actually fitted into a box. This must be depicting the fast-paced manner of the game by portraying stretched letters due to the intense speed. Also, not been able to fit into a box must be depicting distinctive innovations as a racing franchise.
Hints of N.F.S.
As its obvious, the logo has an ‘n’ in it, but F and S? How’s that possible? Well, the artist managed to sneak them into the logo in a very effective way. The below image will show how it has been done. This is something I personally saw marvelous. The way ‘S’ is shown simply exaggerates the speed with the spiky triangle is exceptionally creative.
The Speed!
Speed is the base of NFS games. This is essential to the title. This speed is achieved with huge objects called, vehicles. Furthermore, there must be an opponent to compete with when racing, at least one opponent. Guess what, the NFS logo has two separate shapes and both inspire speed with their edges. I believe that the cover of Need for Speed Hot pursuit (2010) tries to showcase this feature of the logo with 2 vehicles followed by the logo itself. The ninja type slice in the middle of the logo can be used to point out a dirty pass or driving the wrong side with oncoming traffic, or anything, literally anything, that passes or moves in a competitive manner.
Conclusion
From my eyes, artistically and creatively NFS logo holds a good position within the best logos of gaming franchises out there. As even all of the above points are my personal ideas, I believe that this logo is pretty appealing to many around the globe. What’s your opinions about the this logo design?
I think that a logo that is meant to represent a product or service which has a fandom, must be an easily drawable logo. (Ex: Linkin Park) And Need for Speed nailed it!
