Nintendo Switch Logo Design: GIF and artist analysis reveals it's actually asymmetrical
If the Nintendo Switch logo is mathematically uneven but looks visually symmetrical, was it ever uneven to begin with?
It's a design question for the ages, sparked by a particularly eagle-eyed individual who noticed something wasn't quite right in the logo for Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Nintendo Switch.
According to Kotaku, David Hellman — a video game artist, incidentally — noticed that the two halves of the Nintendo Switch logo aren't actually symmetrical. He tweeted an image that mathematically divides the Nintendo Switch logo in half and, uh, as you can see, it is most definitely not symmetrical.
The Nintendo Switch logo is uneven, and it's driving me mad.
The issue seems to stem from the fact that the right side of the logo is more visually heavy than the left. If the two sides were actually equal — as you can visualize thanks to Hellman's follow-up tweet below — the right side would look larger than the left.
The outline on the logo's left half seems to be a factor, too; it causes the shape's interior to be a bit smaller than the right's. In order to compensate for that, it seems Nintendo's designers had to trim down the right side to balance everything out.
But that's not enough. Let's go one level deeper.
In response to the above, fellow game designer Ian Wexler chimed in with all sorts of complicated-looking diagrams breaking down the math of the logo to show why things are structured the way they are.
Also, there's this animated version of the previous tweet, which is very interesting and seems rooted in math/data — but mostly just looks very cool:
Anyway, if you need me, I'll be staring at this for the next six months, slowly spiraling into madness.
More Nintendo news and updates
Check out more Nintendo Switch coverage, including Mic's reports on whether the console will be backwards-compatible, if more characters are coming to Smash Bros., what current games we want high-definition remakes of and information about the upcoming Nintendo Switch event.
