Crafting a Free Art for House & Hand: Making a Logo for a Stanger

Crafting a Free Logo for House & Hand: Making a Logo for a Stanger's Indie Game

Every now and then, a game pops up in your feed that just sticks with you. That’s exactly what happened when I stumbled across House & Hand by LandonDevelops while casually scrolling through YouTube one night. The game had this charming blend of match-3 mechanics, tile-placing strategy, and cozy pixel-world building that immediately caught my eye. It felt familiar enough to understand instantly, but fresh enough to make me want see the game succeed!

In the video, the developer put out a call for artists to reach out with pricing and portfolios. Instead of sending rates, I decided to do something a little different: I offered to make a logo for free. I genuinely liked the idea that much, and I thought it’d be fun to contribute in some small way to an indie project that clearly had a lot of heart behind it.

A couple weeks went by, and then to my surprise LandonDevelops emailed back. And you know what? That alone made my day y'all!

Here's what happened Next.

Discovery and The Sketching Phase

We kicked things off a bit of discovery phase exploring other logos and themes he liked, and I gave some suggestions based on my experience what I thought might make sense. Next I shared some simple pencil drafts. Nothing fancy, just loose concepts exploring shapes, motifs, and overall personality. The game blends nature, structures, and hands-on creativity, so I wanted to play with imagery that nodded to those themes without being too literal.

We went back and forth through email with these sketches—his feedback was clear and thoughtful, and it helped guide the direction in a really natural way. That early phase felt like two people slowly discovering the same idea from different angles.

Moving Into Digital

Once we honed in on a concept that felt right, I moved to a digital pass. With the general concept locked in we explored color pallet for the logo and landed on what you see above. Until we got to a stopping point.

To me the castle, which we decided to make the "H" in house looked out of place. So I went back to the drawing board. Eventually landing on the following variations. I think the much less detailed castle really fit with the minimalistic shading on the text and silhouette on the tree and stones.

The digital phase went fast, just a day or two, but every small adjustment, every new variation felt like it helped clarify these final looks.

Altogether, the entire process took about a week and a half of emailing drafts, notes, and refinements. It was genuinely enjoyable—laid-back, collaborative, and driven by a shared excitement for what the game could become. There’s something special about working directly with a passionate indie dev who cares deeply about the little details.

Final Thoughts

Designing the logo for House & Hand wasn’t just a fun art project, it reminded me why I love collaborating with indie devs in the first place. There’s something special about jumping into a project that’s still taking shape and helping it find its visual identity. I’m really glad I reached out, and even more glad LandonDevelops gave me the chance to contribute.

If you want to check out the game for yourself, you can find House & Hand on Steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4029960/House__Hand/
The YouTube video that started all of this here:
https://youtu.be/5O7bjnFeJK4?si=DFaXuOE86vu-pit_

And if you’d like to follow more of my art, game design work, or general creative chaos, you can find me here:

Website: https://www.lessthanpiart.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/lessthanpi
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lessthanpi_art
Discord: https://discord.gg/mZXwqtUXw4