:: Evil Teacher Productions ::

The full Evil Teacher Productions logo.

Andre Faucher has been a good friend of mine for many years now, and I've always been impressed by his skills with storytelling, creating a dynamic cast of characters, and instilling an overall feeling of genuineness with his world-building. Those of you who game know I'm talking about a GM who has posted thousands of hours of actual play on Gamer's Haven Podcast, and in whose games I have played for as long as I have known him. He's always had a not-so-secret ambition to rule the worl--ahem, I mean to publish his original RPG content for realsies. So, when he came to me asking to have a logo created for the realization of this dream, I was both honored and excited at the prospect of his superior work seeing the light of a digital shelf on the interwebs.

Check out Andre's Facebook page here!
Hit the jump for more on the Evil Teacher Productions logo.

Andre just graduated from the University of Kansas preparatory to becoming a history teacher, or some such. He's had lots of experience with student teaching and he already handles several classes of childr--er, sessions of gamers every week. For this reason it was very appropriate that he chose a teacher as his avatar in the professional RPG world. He'll kill my character for saying it, but he's also got a flair for the dramatic, which makes the intensity of the piercing gaze of this umbral-becloaked instructor all the more fitting for Andre's persona. (Insert Andre's maniacal cackle here.)

Andre and I regularly vent to each other about the frustrations of our respective jobs, and he picked up on a pet peeve of mine that I have mentioned to him before: the "I-don't-know-what-I-want-but-I-reserve-the-right-to-be-upset-if-I-don't-get-it" mentality. When he brought this project to me, Andre knew exactly what he wanted from square one. This made my job much easier; it was just a matter of bringing his ideas to life.

The premise of this logo was the classic evil genius personality with hands folded to indicate the devious machinations he was conjuring in his mind. He was to be almost entirely cloaked in shadow with nothing but his steely gaze to indicate his mood toward the viewer, and behind him would be the classic chalkboard with "Evil Teacher" scrawled upon it. The squareness of his suit would indicate the cold unfeeling rigidity of his demeanor, and the business tie would be carefully selected to match the color of his evil eyes.

I first thought of red for the eyes-and-tie combo, but ultimately went with ice blue (PMS 306) so as to avoid being too cliche, and also to reinforce the cold, calculating persona. I chose Chiller for the font because it suggested the roughness of hand-written chalk script, but more because it had the look and feel of a horror genre, just to add a little more menace to the scene. The hands and shirt stayed white for contrast and readability, and the eraser and chalk were included for ambiance.

The abbreviated Evil Teacher Productions logo.

As part of the project, I created an abbreviated logo knowing that it would be used on the cover of role-playing modules where it would serve as a signature of sorts, while the full version could appear inside or perhaps on the back. You might notice that the collar of the instructor's shirt is black even though the shirt itself is white. This was done to reinforce the deep shadow in the abbreviated logo, which had no suit or blackboard to darken the mood. Even without the plotting hands, the stoic gaze of this bad mamma-jamma still sends shivers down the spine--a perfect commentary on the evil and talented Andre Faucher.