Something that humanity loves to do, even if we shouldn’t, is feel that certain “momentous things” had “epic origins that showcased what was to come!” Oftentimes, it’s far more tame. Take, for example, the Pokemon franchise. If you dive deep enough into its origins, you’ll see it had a VERY rocky road before it became the phenomenon that has almost sold 500 million software units in less than three decades. That “rocky road” wasn’t just about the original Japanese games needing to be rebuilt from the ground up, but also finding a logo that would be suitable for its localization in the West.
Enter Chris Maple, who recently chatted with IGN about how he created the logo you see above. He didn’t work for Nintendo at the time, instead having his own media company. He was contacted by The Big N to help with a logo for what was just called “Pocket Monsters,” via its Japanese title, and needed to be converted to something in the West. Oh, and he had to do it in less than a month and on a small budget because Nintendo had reached out to others to do it, and they failed horribly. It was his job to do better, and the reference materials weren’t what you’d think they were:
“So this other person, she comes down and she has a little cardboard box, and she dumps all these toys and pieces of paper and weird drawings and things all in front of me on the table, and I’m looking at them, and she’s standing there with a smirk on her face holding the box, and I’m looking at Mr. Arakawa, and he’s just staring straight at me and I go, ‘What is this?’ And he goes, ‘It’s a Pocket Monster.’ And I said, ‘Oh, what’s a Pocket Monster?’ He goes, ‘It’s Pokémon. We’re going to call it Pokémon.’”
So, he went to work and made some designs for the logo. You can see what he came up with below:
Eventually, the Nintendo team picked out the one they felt was best from the sketches and asked him to develop it more. What were his thoughts while doing that?
“Energy in it. Also, when I was trying to take some of the real rough sketches from the original artists that did it for the person who started the game, I was trying to envision the story. There’s a story in everything, the story, brand story, what it possibly could turn into.”
While some small modifications were eventually made to the final product, the logo turned out great, and the rest is history. A history that we should all be grateful for. So, thank you, Mr. Maple, for making a great logo that resonates with us to this day.
