Source: Ironic Sans.

I am not a good logo designer. Logo designers are a very special breed of designers who need to focus an incredible amount of time, research, and effort into what might end up as simple as a swoosh. Three of North America’s most easily recognizable logos are as minimal as possible:

ABC and Nike have taken everyday things (the first three letters of the alphabet, a swoosh) and managed to brand them. Gap, like Nickelodeon (orange), have actually managed to brand colour. None of this is an accident.

Design Process

My logo design process involved creating a number of goals:

1. This is my personal website, so it has to be representative of that.
2. It is for the web.
3. It has to include green. In this case: #078C00.
4. It should be minimal enough to fit in with my site design.

Goal one was the hardest, and will always require the most effort for any logo design. If I was working for a corporate client, it would have to be as representative of their company as mine should be for me. The first part of meeting this goal was a self-indulgent period of reflection.

Insulin

I’ve been a Type One diabetic since 1992 and have recently started using an insulin pump; this is on my mind a lot lately. I have always been fascinated with theoretical cell structures. I’m also a big science geek who once considered majoring in Biology.

I thought it would be a good idea to use insulin in the logo, but to what end? I made some sketches involving syringes, liquids, etc.; but nothing worked. Then I started Googling around and found a generated image of insulin hexamers on Wikipedia that I absolutely loved, so I brought it into Illustrator and started making shapes.

Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is my program of choice for graphic design. I love the non-destructive editing process, and years of working in various mediums/sizes have given me a great appreciation for vector-based images.

I started by focusing on the outer triad (I think that’s carbon), but wasn’t feeling anything I came up with. Then I started looking at the inner structure (zinc, I think) and sketched a few ideas from there. From there, it was a matter of anal adjustments (at work, my reputation is “if you need something done, give it to Matthew; he’ll be finished in a half hour, but then he’ll spend the rest of the day adjusting everything pixel-by-pixel”) until it felt right.

The New Logo

Goals Revisited

1. The insulin is obvious; but the green — and the fact that the logo looks like a flower — is a reflection of my environmentalism, the plants I take care of, and my favourite colour.
2. It’s size and minimal colours make it very web-friendly.
3. Green: #078C00; Red: #980738.
4. I feel that the addition of red works very well.

Reflection

I’m happy with the logo for now. As I said, I’m not a good logo designer, so this was really a way to continue learning the logo design process. I intend to actively make changes to get more comfortable with identity branding.

Update

I had a chat with Dany about my logo, and he voiced similar concerns to the ones I had. I decided to rework a couple of my other ideas, and ended up sketching out something new.

Newer New Logo

Sign Language Alphabet

Alphabet Photo Gallery

More at David Airey’s site.

I like Wired‘s “new” design, but that inner column is ridiculous. That’s a full two inches of space you can’t read without straining the spine.

Getting your piece published there has to feel like attending your fourth back-up school.

Part of an(other) old art project–the final piece devolved into me seeing how many clichés I could fit on the page without those clichés being mentioned during criticism (answer: a LOT). Ideally, it was part of a series that explored the relationship between the digital and tangible worlds. In reality, it was part of a series that explored how big of an asshole I could be while getting in art class (answer: a BIG one).

The FontFeed posted a great list of extra bold/black fonts to use when Impact seems overused (i.e. right now).