3... 2... 1... LIFTOFF!
After months of planning, research, and iteration, we're pleased to announce the new Anime-Planet brand.
Anime-Planet was created almost 20 years ago as a pet project, with an arbitrary name and frequently-changing logo. Because A-P has long since become a recognizable destination for the anime and manga community, for the past year, we've focused on creating a brand that can guide any future design changes.
The branding process
We wanted our brand to evoke the following feelings:
We chose traditional Japanese items (lucky cats, darumas, etc), patterns (origami, kimono), and colors (indigo, vermillion, etc) to highlight these themes.
Our logo
We wanted to find a logo that illustrated the sense of whimsy and elegance, while also having a strong tie to the name Anime-Planet.
The process began with dozens of rough sketch ideas, and revisions.
Eventually we moved towards a round planet mascot that could change into one of many other "characters", such as a daruma or lucky cat. The defining "brand" element is the "a_p" for the eyes and mouth of each mascot, which matches the font of our text logo.
This planet mascot also went through many rounds of iteration, including exploring different ring styles.
At this point, the brand was almost finalized, but felt like something was missing. Papercraft and origami was the solution. Our final mascots, and future images on the site such as challenge banners, have papercraft-style shadowing to further promote elegance and whimsy.
Website changes
An effort to fully redesign Anime-Planet.com has been underway for 6 months. As this process will take considerable effort to complete, we wanted to launch the new brand and an intermediary site update.
Over the next few months, we'll continue to roll out small design changes based on the redesign, so that there isn't a huge, jarring change that will happen all at once. We hope to have the new anime information pages, which are already finalized in the design stage, up within a few months.
Today the following changes are live:
Today's update is more of a skin than a redesign, so that there's a halfway point between the current content, and the upcoming redesign. For this reason there might be small things that look a bit weird, and there are still some areas that need updating, like forum styles.
We also plan to update the following in the redesign:
We'll release teasers of the redesign over the coming months, and will release small design updates along the way to make the transition easier.
Thank you, as always, for your support of Anime-Planet. A-P is a fan-created and fan-run website without corporate sponsorship or ownership, so if you appreciate these updates, consider supporting the site. We're especially looking for experienced/advanced front end developers (available either as volunteers or as short-term contracts) that we can leverage to get the redesign up asap.
We look forward to sharing more design updates over the coming weeks and months.
After months of planning, research, and iteration, we're pleased to announce the new Anime-Planet brand.
Anime-Planet was created almost 20 years ago as a pet project, with an arbitrary name and frequently-changing logo. Because A-P has long since become a recognizable destination for the anime and manga community, for the past year, we've focused on creating a brand that can guide any future design changes.
The branding process
We wanted our brand to evoke the following feelings:
- Elegant and whimsical,
- Welcoming and engaging.
- Pleasing and surprising.
We chose traditional Japanese items (lucky cats, darumas, etc), patterns (origami, kimono), and colors (indigo, vermillion, etc) to highlight these themes.
Our logo
We wanted to find a logo that illustrated the sense of whimsy and elegance, while also having a strong tie to the name Anime-Planet.
The process began with dozens of rough sketch ideas, and revisions.
Eventually we moved towards a round planet mascot that could change into one of many other "characters", such as a daruma or lucky cat. The defining "brand" element is the "a_p" for the eyes and mouth of each mascot, which matches the font of our text logo.
This planet mascot also went through many rounds of iteration, including exploring different ring styles.
At this point, the brand was almost finalized, but felt like something was missing. Papercraft and origami was the solution. Our final mascots, and future images on the site such as challenge banners, have papercraft-style shadowing to further promote elegance and whimsy.
Website changes
An effort to fully redesign Anime-Planet.com has been underway for 6 months. As this process will take considerable effort to complete, we wanted to launch the new brand and an intermediary site update.
Over the next few months, we'll continue to roll out small design changes based on the redesign, so that there isn't a huge, jarring change that will happen all at once. We hope to have the new anime information pages, which are already finalized in the design stage, up within a few months.
Today the following changes are live:
- New fonts: Muli and Oswald.
- New logo and header (yes, we do hope to have a dark theme available in the future sometime).
- New homepage and manga homepage banners. The anime, community, and characters homepages should be ready within January.
- New colors (indigo, vermillion, a burnt red, and [in the redesign] the old purple color).
- New visual upgrades that exist in the upcoming redesign (button styles, header styles, etc).
Today's update is more of a skin than a redesign, so that there's a halfway point between the current content, and the upcoming redesign. For this reason there might be small things that look a bit weird, and there are still some areas that need updating, like forum styles.
We also plan to update the following in the redesign:
- Badges. This will be a slow effort, but we aim to replace all badges to be in-line with the new brand.
- Challenge banners.
- More integration of the new mascots.
We'll release teasers of the redesign over the coming months, and will release small design updates along the way to make the transition easier.
Thank you, as always, for your support of Anime-Planet. A-P is a fan-created and fan-run website without corporate sponsorship or ownership, so if you appreciate these updates, consider supporting the site. We're especially looking for experienced/advanced front end developers (available either as volunteers or as short-term contracts) that we can leverage to get the redesign up asap.
We look forward to sharing more design updates over the coming weeks and months.
