Square Enix logo history: Shaping the Square Enix logo
Known throughout the world today, the Square Enix logo has become one of the most iconic emblems in the video gaming industry.
While the company’s visual identity may not have changed much since the company was created in 2003, the Square Enix logo history goes back further than most people realize. After all, the brand was formed by merging two existing companies.
Today, most people are familiar with Square Enix as a major player in the gaming and entertainment landscape.
Aside from producing a range of popular game franchises, such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, Square Enix is also responsible for various manga publications, arcade facilities, and other forms of merchandise.
For video game lovers, the Square Enix logo is often included alongside famous emblems from major brands, such as Blizzard, Sony, and Bethesda.
Today, we’re going to be taking a closer look at the evolution of the Square Enix visual identity.
Does Square Enix still exist? Introducing Square Enix
Officially formed in 2003, Square Enix is a Japanese multinational holding company, as well as an entertainment conglomerate and production enterprise. It’s best known for franchises such as Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Kingdom Hearts.
However, Square Enix also has a strong presence outside of the video game publishing and development landscape too.
The original “Square Enix” brand was formed in April 2003, following a merger between two existing companies: Square (Squaresoft) and Enix. The Enix brand, founded in 1975, was focused heavily on publishing games created by partnering companies.
One of the company’s first games, Dragon Warrior, was released in 1986 and eventually sold more than 1.5 million copies in Japan.
Square, created in 1983, was a computer game software company built as a division of a power line construction business. In 1986, the division spun off into an independent company, although it struggled to achieve a lot of success in its space.
The first successful franchise created by the brand was the “Final Fantasy” game, which became the company’s leading franchise.
Today, the combined Square Enix brand has achieved phenomenal success in the gaming space. Many of the company’s franchises have sold over 10 million copies around the world. In fact, Final Fantasy has sold around 173 million games as of 2020.
Who owns Square Enix?
Despite speculation that Square Enix might be owned by a number of brands, ranging from Disney to Microsoft, the company is actually a wholly owned subsidiary of the Square Enix corporation, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Square Enix logo history Starting with the Squaresoft logo
As mentioned above, Square Enix logo history begins with the production of two separate brands: the Enix corporation and Square, or “Squaresoft.”
While the merger of the two companies resulted in maintaining most of the employees from the Enix business, it was actually the Square branding that played the most significant role in defining Square Enix’s visual identity.
The Enix logo
The Enix corporation, created in 1975, was a publisher responsible for a range of video games, manga, and anime products.
The brand was best known for the Dragon Quest series. The last logo used by the Enix brand before the Square Enix merger was a simple combination logo featuring a large green swirl designed to look like a lower-case “E.”
Underneath the swirl, we see the Enix wordmark, depicted in a decorative font with bold elements distributed throughout each letter.
The Squaresoft logo
While Square didn’t achieve the same levels of fame and fortune as Enix before its merger into Square Enix, it still had a huge impact on the future of the Square Enix logo.
One of the most recent logos used by the Squaresoft brand before the merger featured the name of the company written in black, italicized font.
Within the “A,” a red triangle has been implemented, replacing the central line of the capital letter. The colors and style of this emblem appear to have inspired the creation of the subsequent Square Enix logo.
The Square Enix logo
Since its inception in 2003, Square Enix hasn’t made any major changes to its logo design. However, there have been various versions of the emblem produced for different purposes. The core logo is a simple wordmark featuring black sans-serif font.
The typeface is geometric in style, with a lot of blocky letters written in all uppercase.
Similar to the Squaresoft logo, this emblem uses red shapes in place of certain elements within the company’s characters. The lines in the middle of each “E” have been replaced by red rectangles.
Alongside this core logo, Square Enix has also produced two smaller monogram logos featuring just the letters “S” and “E.” These emblems feature the same color palettes as the larger logo, as well as a consistent font choice. The red rectangle in the E is also present here.
The Square Enix games logo: Colors and fonts
The Square Enix logo today is one of the better-known emblems in the gaming world, despite its relative simplicity. Every part of the design, whether you’re looking at the full wordmark logo or the monogram, has been cultivated to convey a specific message.
In all versions of the emblem, the Square Enix logo includes a blocky, geometric font, which highlights not just part of the brand’s name (Square) but also its focus on creating highly intricate games with solid storylines and graphics.
The color palette of red and black seems to be taken directly from the previous brand, Square, while the Enix visual identity has been completely replaced.
The colors red and black convey a sense of passion and stability within the brand. When combined with the blocky characters of the logo, these color choices help to define Square Enix as a creative, innovative, and highly professional company.
You can find some useful resources connected to the Square Enix logo here:
What color is the Square Enix logo?
The Square Enix logo colors seem to be inspired by the color palette chosen for one of the previous companies which formed the company. Similar to Squaresoft, Square Enix has chosen a combination of black and red for its palette.
Often, the Square Enix logo is presented on a white background, but there are variations wherein the colors are inverted for a black background.
The exact hex code for the Square Enix logo color red is #E20A16. It’s a bright shade that contrasts well with the black in the rest of the wordmark, as well as the white background usually used to portray the logo. The color stands for passion and vitality.
What font does the Square Enix logo use?
The Square Enix logo font is one of the most compelling parts of the company’s logo. The brand chose a highly geometric font with a lot of squared-off contours intended to demonstrate stability and strength. The design is quite similar to the Bank Gothic Light typeface.
However, this particular font has been customized to suit the needs of the Square Enix brand.
The most interesting part of the Square Enix font can be seen in the lines for the capital “E’s,” which have been replaced with disconnected, red rectangles.
Shaping the perfect brand with Square Enix
While the Square Enix logo history might not appear to go back very far at first, we can see that the current design has an interesting background on closer inspection.
The Square Enix logo seems to be based heavily on the previous Squaresoft logo design, even though the Square business lost many of its employees and shares following the merger with Enix.
Today, the Square Enix logo is a simple but eye-catching emblem designed to demonstrate the innovative and modern nature of the company. The design works well across various environments and even has numerous variations, making it ideal for different mediums.
Fabrik: A branding agency for our times.
As Fabrik’s creative director, Stephen oversees complex branding programmes. He advises our clients on their tone of voice, creates logos and visual identities and crafts names for companies, products and services. Writing for Brand Fabrik Stephen reflects his love for logo design and visual identity.
