Ars Magica tote bag for my Ars Magica stuff
From: SteveS62 Posted on: 11/6/2003 7:37 am
To: ALL
Message: 307.1
I just thought that it would be cool to have a tote bag for my gaming stuff with a gaming themed logo on it, instead of some other random logo. Thanks to a suggestion on a Pyramid bulletin board, I got a plain canvas bag at a craft store. I got Avery heat-transfer media for about in the office supply aisle of a drugstore.

Now I'm thinking about graphic design. Since Ars Magica is the only routine gaming I'm doing right now, I want an Ars Magica design on the bag. I have a scalable copy of the three-snake design on the cover of Ars Magica fourth edition, but I haven't decided what else to use. Ideally, it would be nice to have good, scalable lettering saying "Ars Magica" in a font similar to that on the books' covers. It would also be cool to have some other scalable art that goes with it, but most is bitmaps that are likely to look crappy (or at least unharmonious with the three-snake design) if scanned as a bitmap. Any good suggestions for scalable clip-art that might serve the purpose?

There are two sides on the bag, but I'll leave the other side blank until I join into a regular game other than the Ars Magica game.

I know there are copyright and trademark issues with grabbing art and graphics, so I'm only interested in pointers to stuff where permission is a possibility. I'm not making it myself to cheat on copyrights or trademarks, but rather because I want a cool bag and haven't seen one I liked. I would appreciate proper one-time, personal use permission for the three-snake design and the Ars Magica name, if anyone reading this has the authority to grant it.

From: Al3xWhite Posted on: 11/6/2003 6:18 pm
To: SteveS62
Message: 307.2
in reply to: 307.1
If you have a scanner (or access to one) you could just scan the title of Ars with the required resolution. I'm not sure the Internet would have all that much (although Google could tell you).

~Alex

From: SteveS62 Posted on: 11/11/2003 5:19 pm
To: SteveS62
Message: 307.3
in reply to: 307.1
I finished the project with the three-snake design and decorated lettering saying "Ars Magica". I used the Autorealm Blackletter font, with a metalic style shading, purple for the initials and blue for the lowercase, and gold highlights on the initials. Those colors aren't the ones on the book cover's lettering, but they had to stand out on the bag's off-white background, not the book's dark background. That's all I ended up with, aside from credits text in a small font at the bottom. I decided a simpler look done cleanly was better than an ornate design done poorly.