Sunrise Games is a computer game studio from Sydney NSW, AU. Their products are based on good old computer games from 80's and 90's. "Those games that'll keep you awake till sunrise!" - says the owner.
I wanted to catch that retro flavour and avoid depicting sun at all costs. I wanted something more interesting and catchy than a widely used yellow semicircle. What is a perfect symbol for sunrise if not a rooster? Plus - it's other meanings completely correspond to the company's ideals.
My regular logotype cook-book, Dictionary of Symbols (
Dictionnaire des symmboles - Allen Gerbrandt and Jean Chevalier) says the following:
...Rooster is a solar symbol. In India it's an attribute of Skanda, which personifies solar energy. In Japan - personifies audacity. Holy roosters are bred in some temples. In China - meaning of "good" , "auspicioussign". It has Five Virtues - civic (crest gives it Mandarin appearance),military (spurs on its feet), courage (its behavior in fighting),kindliness (shares its food with hens), reliability (accuracy with which announces the dawn). In Greece - symbol of light that is born and attribute of Apollo. It was believed that it can cure disease. Together with dog and horse - one ofthree animals that accompanies human spirit in the afterlife. In theNordic tradition - symbol of warrior vigilance, guardian of life...
Having this motif secured, I moved on to typography. The font (
Freakout_Go bananas.ttf by Samuel Park) wasn't my first choice. At first I tried something in harmony with rooster above, but in some of my early drawings there was a rooster standing on the fence. It gave a nice, heavy, gamey, retro base. Plus it has corresponding name.
