LoL Logo PNG
The video game features a golden LoL logo, its letters looking like precious ingots. They perfectly convey the mood of the story unfolding in the battle arena. The classic game image is reflected in the monolithic lettering. At first, it sat on a dark gray background, reminiscent of a fragment of an ancient wall; then it sat on a neutral white background so the glyphs looked even more colorful and spectacular.
LoL is a free-to-play online multiplayer game released in 2009 for macOS and Microsoft Windows. Its developer is Riot Games. It has console and mobile versions and is monetized through character customization. The game’s full name is League of Legends. It is now the largest esports game, with international competitions and 12 leagues. As a result, the world championship is held annually, with live broadcasts on several well-known Internet platforms (Bilibili, YouTube, Twitch) and on one sports TV channel (ESPN). In 2019, the final drew about 44 million unique viewers.
League of Legends, better known as LoL, of course, started with excitement. Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck, the founders of Riot Games, wanted something on par with DotA (Defense of the Ancients). So they organized a cyber gaming tournament among students at the University of Southern California. Their goal was to secretly discover talented gamers that they intended to recruit for the team. This is how they met many of the key figures who played a major role in launching the novelty. As a result, they presented it four months later, in 2007, at a computer game developers’ conference. It was based on the Warcraft III engine.
Meaning and History
The creators continually update League of Legends, revising the art effects; after 2014, they increased the frequency of adjustments to once every 2-3 weeks. Game designers and artists, naturally, don’t forget visual identity. They coordinated it with the game’s content, or rather, with the mood and atmosphere it supports. They got golden, shiny lettering on a dark gray background. The noble glow is preserved in the second version of the text logo.
What is LoL?
LoL is an acronym for League of Legends. Riot Games introduced it as an online video game in 2009 and monetizes it through character upgrades. It runs on two operating systems: macOS and Microsoft Windows. Today, the multiplayer game is one of the biggest esports titles and comprises 12 leagues, culminating in an international final among the winners.
2009 – 2019
Although the debut LoL emblem is textual, the lettering looks as if it were drawn. The glyphs’ graphic quality comes from their three-dimensional form: the letters are convex, massive, and volumetric. This effect comes from the contrasting black borders and dark shadows surrounding the title and background. Blurred outlines and vagueness characterize the text and the long shield with five sharp protrusions. Its edges are also gold and gradient-filled. As a result, the glyphic font looks mysterious but elegant. The overall image is “stony,” which imitates natural stone’s hardness, hue, and texture. Together, they create a strong subtext about the warriors’ battle.
2019 – today
The current League of Legends logo is increasingly light. It has no dark elements and a blurred black background – everything is clean and transparent. Only the letters, stylized as gold bars with an uneven texture, as if cast under artisanal conditions, create a sense of tension. Each glyph has lines and a narrow shadow, giving it a three-dimensional look. As in the last version of the logo, the preposition “of” is set in small type, while the other two words are in large type.
Ernst Friz designed the lettering for the debut LoL logo. This matters because the typographer essentially served as the designer, since the video game’s visual identity is textual rather than graphic. The second version is also wordy, but less oppressive than the first.
Font and Colors
The three-dimensional glyphs in the early version are made to look old. This style adds noble sophistication and power to the League of Legends inscription. The font is decorated with barely noticeable serifs that look like extensions. Some of them are triangular. The typeface recalls Ernst Friz’s Friz Quadrata. The second emblem uses Sharp Sans. Emily Oberman of Pentagram developed this wordmark. But the palette always stays the same: it’s gold, which makes the logo royally chic. Dark gray and ashy, smoky tones complement it nicely.
