Design decisions for my logo
After yesterdays post and still not being well enough to go to work I decided to write a new post on how I came up with the logo that you see here on this site.
This logo is the second version that I made for the portfolio. The first one people did not get and fully understand and that made the logo fail as a whole. To me logos have to be recognizable in all aspects from black and white to full colour and then to just outlines.
Here is the logo that I started off to use on the site.
A little information about the logo, I made this logo concept when sitting in classroom when I was about fourteen. Even before I knew what graphic design was. I was just interested in wasting time away in the class. It was a play on my Surname Downie. It is a capital E going down in to a arrowhead and that shows Down and E. Rather clever for a fourteen year old if I must say so. But as I said it was not working as a logo in the end run.
I knew that for this site I had to change it to something simple but at the same time unique. I decided on using typeface with a little difference. All will be revealed in a moment.
First I had to decided on a font that was complementary to the design but at the same time different. I made a typesheet in Adobe Illustrator of the fonts that I decided that worked for the design and then printed them out.
Here is the top of the typesheet that I printed out.
I then narrowed the typeface down to three choices these where Akzidenz Grotesk, Amplitude and Agenda. Notice how they all start with the letter a. It was by accident this happened but seems strange to me.
After much deliberation I decided to go with Akzidenz as the letter e was perfect for what I had in my mind to add something unique so that it was just more them a typeface.
I took the e out of the design and made my own styled to look like it was the same e. If you look at the e closely you can see it is my initials that make the letter e.
As you can see it adds something a little more unique then just a typeface. I hope that you enjoyed the post and if there is anything else that you would like to know just leave a comment.
6 Responses to “Design decisions for my logo”
Dale-Anthony
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Interesting read about your first logo.
When I first looked at your original logo I did wonder what the idea behind it was now after reading your post it makes perfect sense.
Also like to say you have a great design here, not come across your site before today but it looks brilliant.
Haris
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Absolutely amazing, Ryan.
I really like how you came up with basically a great idea.
I have few q’s:
1) I have heard that you should come up with logos that are quick for grabbing the site concept. Your logo required reading of full blog post to grab the concept. Don’t you think that’s a bit out of the standards?
2) On your logo wireframes, the initials are clear with black and grey on “e” but on the site, it needs to be clearer too. Is that on purpose?
Ryan Downie
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:13 pm
@Dale Thanks for the kind words. Makes these posts worth while.
@Haris 1. Yes I agree with the concept of the logo needs to be instantly got but I wanted something a little different, in the way that you do not notice it unless you look for it. It is the same with some of the annotated headers i have on the site.
The devil is in the details or so they say.
2. Regarding the issues with legibility on these colours no, they was picked on purpose. They are picked to represent the site and play down the initials, so that you can only see them if you look for them like mentioned in the first part of this comment.
Haris
July 2nd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
How about making the initials a little sharp? I think they’re not sharp, at the moment like in the wireframe.
Antoine Butler
July 15th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Ahhh, I remember just before you scrapped the first logo. Although I never saw the e made up of your initials and I love it. It too would have required some thought, but I love it and hope at a later point you get to put it to use.
In hindsight I continue to think you made a good choice with the logo. On the website in particular, with the style and subtle activity in the header, your logo stands out on it’s on with out having to compete with the site design.
In my book, that’s a success! Here’s to clean design.
Brian
August 5th, 2008 at 6:27 am
I agree with the others. If you want the “R”-within-”e” to work then the R needs to stick out more. Right now the “e” looks like a θ (theta).
I like that font you used for the logo. It seems to me you could create a nice mini-logo out of the “Ry” part that exploits the parallelism between the diagonals of each letter. Such a “Ry” logo could work kind of like the abbreviations in the periodic table. Possibly reduce the X-height of the Y and shift the diagonal of the R right slightly.
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