When you look at the Attack on Titan logo, images of metal crunching, destruction, and devastated cities come into view. The human world is on the verge of extinction. The logo recreates the apocalyptic world and invites the user into the game.
Attack on Titan: Brand Overview
Attack on Titan is a Japanese manga series in dark fantasy with post-apocalyptic themes. It is written and drawn by artist Hajime Isayama. The comics were published by Kodansha, who published them in their Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine. The comics were published in series from 2009 to 2021 and took up 34 tankōbon. An animated movie was produced at the same time, which began in 2013 and has yet to be completed, as the series consists of four seasons with several episodes each. Overall, the manga has been an unprecedented commercial success, as it has sold over 100 million tankōbon copies as of the end of 2019. It thus became the best-selling manga in the world and was honored with several prestigious awards: the Kodansha Manga Award, the Harvey Award, and the Attilio Micheluzzi Award in 2012. Attack on Titan was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest published comic book.
Meaning and History
The manga’s events occur in a universe where humans live in gated cities surrounded by triple walls to protect them from the cannibalistic giants of the Titans. The action centers around a young man named Eren Yeager, who has vowed to destroy the humanoid giants for killing his city and his mother. The editors of Kodansha released regular chapters of the comic.
In addition, an animated series consisting of four seasons appeared a little later. Three of them were produced by Wit Studios. The first one was released in 2013 and included 25 episodes. The second was launched in 2017 and included 12 episodes. The third was split into two parts: 12 episodes appeared in 2018 and 10 in 2019. MAPPA is now working on the fourth season. In 2020, 16 episodes have already been released. The rest are scheduled to be released in 2022. According to the idea, these will be the final episodes.
The literary work is inspired by Japanese culture; as the author admitted, its key theme is the inner feelings of each person, which he presented in a fascinating and entertaining form. Throughout the plot, tied around Eren Yeager, the protagonist, and his friends make many discoveries for themselves and the world. For example, it turns out that they live on an isolated island where their people have long been banished for crimes committed against other people. The further you go, the more mysterious the manga becomes. The energy of the mystery is reflected in the emblems.
2009 – today
The main element of the emblem was the name of the manga. At first, it was depicted in Japanese style – with the help of hieroglyphics. They have the structure of a destroyed stone wall and resemble flying-off pieces of masonry, once a powerful fortress. A wide range of gray colors was used: ash, graphite, silver, and metallic. There are violet flecks in local places, and through all the symbols, there are elongated lines. The English title of the comic is located under them in small font. It is written in white Old English letters in lowercase and is located on a red-orange-yellow background as a long strip with narrowed ends.
2014 – today
In 2014, an English version of the logo was created with an original redesign of the letters, rendered in a gray-purple palette. Instead of the previous bright accents, the designers chose muted tones and a smooth texture with softly blurred shadows. Sharp contours gave the inscription a harsher, darker tone.
The manga title is set in a typeface inspired by ancient Germanic styles, where elongated forms and abrupt shifts in stroke thickness create an atmosphere of tension and gloom. Instead of classic serifs, the letters feature prominent thickenings, emphasizing the weight and seriousness of the storyline.
Beneath the English title are the Japanese characters 「進撃の巨人」 (Shingeki no Kyojin), written in a small, rough-edged font that matches the overall theme. The characters are marked with dark red stains resembling battle traces. A metallic texture adds to the warlike and dramatic feel of the logo.
A faint yet cold glow around the inscription enhances the sense of unease and tension, highlighting the brutal and unrelenting nature of the “Attack on Titan” narrative.
Font and Colors
In addition to the text logos, the Attack on Titan manga has a graphic icon. It is associated with the characters, representing two wing feathers resembling knife blades. There are nine of them on each side. The feathers have a segmental structure and consist of three segments, except for the lower ones – they have only two fragments each. The right wing is white contoured, and the left is blue and solidly molded. They partially overlap and are enclosed in a pentagonal gray shield with a white border, by design reminiscent of a window.
The developers chose Linotext font for the emblem, which Morris Fuller Benton designed. The logo’s color scheme is restrained and gray-based, dominated by ash, metallic, graphite, pewter, platinum, and zirconium. The first version also features purple, orange, yellow, and red colors.