Spore: A Critique

Spore was designed by Pete McCracken (from the Portland Type Company), in partnership with Veronika Burian (from TypeTogether), and commissioned by Cinco Design.

It is a typeface family created specifically for the life simulation computer game Spore published by EA (Electronic Arts Video Games) in 2008. This three weight typeface family has been used for all materials linked to the game, including the marketing campaign, game manual, website etc. but not intended for use within the actual game itself.

Spore is a single-player game where players act as “God”, creating and controlling new species throughout 5 stages of evolution, from a microscopic organism to an advanced space traveling civilization.

The Brief

The main goals for the aesthetic of the fonts were to be overall as friendly and inviting as possible as EA did not have any particular target age group. The font was to be based upon or inspired by the Spore logo (designed by Cinco Design).

The Spore logotype had extremely rounded shapes, removed all counters except for that of the ‘O’, whose counter had been replaced with a rounded representation of a galaxy or universe.

Thus the key features of the typeface family were to be:

1. Circular geometry

2. Rounde

d edges

3. Symmetry

Analysis

The resulting typeface certainly followed the three key features outlined in the brief, as well as managing to be very open and inviting. The sans-serif fonts had stems and ascenders that were kept perfectly vertical with rounded ends and no other embellishments, keeping the font very simple and symmetric.

Counters were disproportionately large and circular, though slightly squashed with a vertical axis so that letters appeared well balanced in bodies of text.

‘Outstrokes’ (and/or finials) were placed on the ‘a’ so that it could be differentiated from an ‘o’, and the ‘q’ to give it a little idiosyncrasy, as well as on the ‘l’ and the ‘t’ for legibility. All these strokes were almost identical, thus maintaining the symmetry and collectiveness of the typeface.

Apertures were kept as symmetric as possible (eg. for letters ‘E’, ‘m’, ‘n’/’u’) except for cases where it would throw off balance and look too ridiculous (eg. for letters ‘K’, ‘k’).

Overall

Overall Spore is a very inviting and friendly typeface family, reminiscent of Comic Sans and does well in following after the logo, however does look a little childish and does not succeed in catering for all ages.

The typeface corroborates very well with the marketing campaign and matches the designs on posters and billboards for the game. The printed text is also quite easy on the eyes with very even kerning.

Numbers in the typeface family however look ridiculous when placed together as they are not evenly sized. This results in a messy alignment of numbers, with some (eg. 1 and 7) looking extremely squashed and others (eg. 0) looking far too bloated in comparison.

References
Grace Partridge 2011, Veronica Burian & Pete McCracken for Spore, The Case and Point, viewed 24 July 2011, http://thecaseandpoint.com/2011/03/veronika-burian-pete-mccracken-for-spore/

Portland Type Company 2011, McCracken int'l inc., Portland, viewed 25 July 2011, http://portlandtype.co/

Type Together 2008, Type Together, Prague, viewed 25 July 2011, http://www.type-together.com/index.php?action=portal/viewContent&cntId_content=2700&id_section=141