Amoriem Labs

Amoriem Labs is the undergraduate game development club at Yale University. Before I was project manager as a junior, I started as a first-year designing logos and UI elements. Amoriem’s name comes from the first game produced by its members. From Amoriem’s website:

The name is an anagram of memoria ("memory" in Latin), and includes the words amor ("love" in Spanish) and mori ("to die" in Latin).”

While my design philosophy is usually about emphasizing aesthetics and tone over gimmicks and “visual puns”, I decided to go against that guideline in creating the symbol used in the logo. In the landscape orientation, it resembles the buttons and D-pad of a typical gamepad layout. When rotated to the portrait orientation, it resembles (albeit abstractly) a skull with a heart on the forehead - a nod to the etymology of the group’s name.

When choosing the brand colors, I first considered using Yale’s signature blue, but decided against it. Many clubs at Yale use those colors, so I figured that in order for our flyers and such to stand out, we would need to go a different route. I went with colors that were vibrant, exciting, and a bit unconventional to reflect the enthusiasm and slight avante-garde bent to the club’s game development ethos.

Since my time with the club, the logo has been updated and streamlined - and I have to admit, while the skull imagery has been lost, the new logo is a fair bit cleaner and easier to read. Nevertheless, I’m happy with the original version, and glad to see that its DNA is still there.