The original grydscaen concept
grydscaen was originally a concept that I came up with in the 8th grade writing science fiction stories about the main character Ameliano Dejarre who went to an all boy’s boarding school. This character and the Rom character who was a Packrat and a hacker in a separate story written in the seventh grade were merged into a single storyline that because the precursor to the grydscaen novel series in the serial short stories under the grydscaen header  called “5000CCs of Black Market Neurocyne” about Raven who was the very first subversive and psychic character along with Faid and the story “A Storm’ Coming” about Rom which relays Rom whose name means ‘Read Only Memory’ having lost his memory and shows the subway squat that became the Packrat sprawl.

The first usage of grydscaen
The first use of the term in the story which is the network of everything was in many years ago in a 4 page comic strip about Rom hired as a hacker in the Echelons when he was a Packrat and reading a punch code mainframe card by placing it at his lips. The first use of the Packrat translation of the word for network in Packrat code which is translated as “grydscaen” and the name of the series and all the novels/world/concept/art/logo was in 1995 when the first chapbook was printed of the Packrat Code which is the rules the Packrats follow and their code of conduct. In 1993 the journal “19 Miles to Utopia” was finished and that story solidified the personalities for the characters Anis Renquist, Berlin Macelroi and Ameliano Dejarre bringing those characters sufficiently and prominently into the cyberpunk world of grydscaen focused on their antics in the City and their story became the novel grydscaen: utopia, the third book published in the grydscaen series. The first published and for sale use of “grydscaen,” was the first book in the series published in 2010 with the title grydscaen: retribution, volume 1 in the series. Originally there was only going to be one book but I had a whole lot more to write.

The grydscaen logo design
The grydscaen logo is in a specific font and appears white on all the full length published novels. The manga are a little different but the consistency is necessary for subsequent works.

The key design element of the grydscaen logo is the prominent “g” symbol and the way it is written. grydscaen is always listed as lowercase unless a distributor lists it wrong. The subtitle always follows the  colon on the book covers. All grydscaen full length novels have a title and subtitle, such as grydscaen: beginnings or grydscaen: war. The only ones that are different are the short stories and a later novella called “The Seal Maker.”

There were various fonts attempted before settling on the final one that was used for the grydscaen books with the white text on the cover. I wanted the cover design of all the books to be black and that is why grydscaen displays as white on all the novels with the subtitle in the selected highlight colour.

grydscaen branding process update
In January 2017 the grydscaen brand is going to take its next step in the branding process. We will be keeping a close eye on how this process will go so that we can move to the next step. Hopefully everything will go smoothly. We are ready for the process and I look forward to hopefully a smooth trip to the next step. If it becomes bumpy then I will get prepared to do what needs to be done.

Thanks everyone.