The latest entry in the Official Left 4 Dead blog is about how they decided on the box art and shows some examples of what they had before they decided on the current art. Read the whole story for more about the design and the some examples of what they had before they decided on the current art. Below is a snippet of the article and one of the previous designs.
Hello. My name is Jeremy Bennett, and I’m an artist at Valve. Most gamers only ever get to see the finished product of a game cover, so we thought some of you might find it interesting to hear the process that led to Left 4 Dead’s final art. As you’ll see, there were quite a few attempts along the way, all of them eventually abandoned.Our first designs focused on Bill, Louis, Francis and Zoey, the four lead characters that players would be guiding through Left 4 Dead’s post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. Right away this presented problems.Typically, for a video game (or DVD or book) cover to be eye-catching, there’ll be a single prominent element front and center—our “hero” character, for example, with ancillary characters standing around in the background:
