Brevard Camarilla is a classic-horror themed LARP (Live-Action Role Playing) group. Two of the groups members approached me about drafting a logo to represent their particular faction for when they attend regional sessions. The final rendition can be found in my site’s Graphic Design section. Coming up with something simple and with impact, yet that represented a group composed of werewolves, vampires, demons, posed a unique design challenge.
Brevard Camarilla Logo
Ultimately, my first and only sketch (see above) wound up being what they were looking for. Research and brainstorming for this project initially entailed perusing through piles and piles of role-playing manuals, hoping to find some jumping-off point for an image that woud represent all of the players. Looking online for other LARP groups showed me that any emblems from these books were already being used in about every way possible, and I knew then I’d have to approach this from a different angle to make it stand out. Getting to the root of the matter, I looked up the word “camarilla,” and was fixated on the historic sense of the word, meaning “A secret, usually sinister, group of conspiring advisors close to the leadership.” A mental image began to form… A secret organization of loosely associated vampires and werewolves and so on, close to a high-ranking official, whom all had the common bond of seeking power via evil deeds…
The graphic would be a discarded bleeding crown of royalty — A concise visual representation of a murderous coup. The font would be Ravenscroft — A sinister and moody modern Gothic typeface. I’ve always enjoyed the look, but never had a solid use for it til now. Just to flex some of my font trivia knowledge, Ravenscroft the font is so-named after Thurl Ravenscroft, a major player in the development of the music and some visuals in Walt Disney’s Haunted Mansion attraction, where you might have seen a similar typeface on signs. (Even deeper down the proverbial rabbit’s hole of trivia: Thurl was also the voice of the classic Tony the Tiger, and sang the famous “Mr. Grinch” from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!“).