I saw a commercial for the new Guitar Hero game, and when the logo flashed on screen at the end of the spot, I couldn’t help but think that I’ve seen this logo before. Upon looking at the logo some more, it dawned on me that it was basically the same font as the JJ Abrams rebooted Star Trek franchise’s logo.
Granted, upon putting them directly next to one another for direct comparison reveals that they’re not 100% identical, but at first blush, my designer’s eye is basically seeing “the Star Trek font” when I see the new Guitar Hero’s logo.
For all intents and purposes, Star Trek’s typeface is probably derived from an existing font, with slight modifications made to it to (attempt to) make it their own, but as far back as I can recollect, Star Trek did come first, therefore, I immediately associate it to them when I see any instance of a similar font being used.
And upon the closer inspection, it’s clear that there are subtle differences between both logos, but let me let you in on a little bit of designer trade: it’s tremendously easy to alter a font, and then claim it’s one’s own doing. The procedure I would likely utilize is typing up what I wanted my wordmark to be in Adobe Illustrator, and then outlining the text, so that it was static shapes, and no longer editable text. And once outlined, some selective and carefully modifications to anchor points to alter the appearance of the letters so that strokes appear higher or lower, angled differently, remove/add curvature to corners, and other subtle things that can help murky up the waters of possible unauthorized font usage.
There’s little doubt that both logos derived from the same font; I mean, the angle of the shear (how italicized they are) are completely identical, for starters. The Star Trek logo’s A is probably the most drastic difference between the two wordmarks, with theirs looking like it was frankensteined together by cloning two sides of an E. The R’s are almost identical, and it’s hard to say if Guitar Hero lowered their joint point, or if Star Trek raised theirs.
And because it clearly makes it their own, for whatever reason, Guitar Hero added spikes to the G, H, and O; puzzling to me, is the lack of spike on the R of Guitar, because it breaks the convention of first and last letter of each word; I get that the R’s angles and lack of useable space on the right side of the letter makes it impossible for it to have a consistent heighted spike as all the other letters, but then again, they could’ve raised the height of all spikes to maintain consistency.
The bottom line is that in spite of all the potential arguing that could be done that these two logos are not using identical fonts, they’re simply close enough in similarity to where an argument can be even made in the first place. There’s no doubt about it that they’re based off of the same font; simply by virtue of being out there first, Star Trek gets dibs on the look, while Guitar Hero get labeled by me, as the entity with lazy creative, and not nearly enough effort to separate themselves from the pack.
Frankly, I’m curious why they even changed their logo in the first place, the old wordmark was pretty unique. Sure, it was a little too Metalocalypse-y in appearance, but shit, that’s rock ‘n roll. But instead, with an artificial and forced change, I’m inclined to auto-subtitle Guitar Hero with The Next Generation, since it works twofold in acknowledging the next iteration of the franchise, as well as paying acknowledgment to that their logo is basically Star Trek’s.
