new logo design

As part of this latest revamp which is already under way, i wanted to redesign my current logo.

The existing logo is pretty simple… i used my own handwriting as a font and created some swirls on the ‘s’ in ‘smemon’ just to emphasize the irishness. I then created a lightbulb idea sign to represent creativity / ideas / entrepreneurial stuff. However, it’s all a little detached and isn’t the friendliest font on the eyes. The colours are also pretty dull, although that was deliberate at the time to blend in with this current theme.

So i came up with several ideas and spent literally hours in photoshop messing about. There was really only one idea that stood out for me and i’ll go through how i arrived at it…

This was one of my ideas that made it through to production stages 🙂 I was happy with the neatness of the text and preferred the font over my own handwriting. The jonny bravo element was just a bit of fun (i was struggling to come up with graphic elements) but for a while i considered going with it, then came to my senses.

This was my progression from the jonny bravo logo… the main differences are the two swirls replacing mr bravo and the brighter, richer colours. I also dropped the ‘s’ from smemon as i’d deliberately designed the swirls to create an ‘s’ like shape.

This is what i finally settled on… i changed the font to something more round and elegant. I also like the way the bar on the ‘e’ drops down – that’s a pretty irish style. The font is pretty classy and that’s what attracted me to it. Much better than the flintstone-type look of the earlier fonts above. Also, notice i put the ‘s’ back in ‘smemon’ as regular text. I just felt it looked better and would prevent any potential confusion.

This is just a variation from the design above… nothing has changed only the location of the swirls. They’re separated and at either ends of the text, so i’ll use this logo in places where i have a lot of width to spare, but not much height… long narrow banner ads would be a good example.

This is probably my preferred logo over the two above, but i’m not sure i’ll use it on the website. I’m undecided. The ‘problem’ with it is that it has a greater height than the rest, which means i’m wasting more pixels at the top of the page… the most valuable real estate on screen. This would look impressive for example on a portfolio site, centrally aligned with nothing else on screen.

The swirls aren’t really representing anything in particular, but i liked the modern look of them and i suppose they could be associated with a journey or something… i’ll not get too caught up in the meaning behind them though – there’s probably a deeper meaning as to why i chose them but they just ‘looked good’ to me which is a response you’ll usually get from me if you ask me to explain my design choices – i do think i have an eye for good design but i’m not good at justifying why i’d go for ‘x’ over ‘y’

Anyway, it’s great to be able to design your own logos and revamp a site by yourself… years ago i would have paid for all this and not got the sort of quality i’m getting now… that’s largely because i know what i want and i’m now more equipped to deliver what i want than i was a few years ago.