Project Overview

The end is in sight for the last part of the project. I am supposed to make a brand for myself. This is not an easy feat for someone who doesn’t like talking about himself (don’t laugh because I write a blog about myself). To start off on creating a brand for myself the goal was to make three possible logos that I can use.

It was suggested that looking on Pinterest is a good way to see what other people have done for their personal brands. To check out a link to my “identity” board, click here. This was a great step since I had a brain block as to what I would make for my logo.
 

Sketches

The next step was to just start drawing sketches. By just drawing and not worrying about what came out, I got a lot of junk, but then I got a lot of really cool designs that I have fully or partially implemented in my final logo ideas.

Vectorizing

Illustrator is awesome because you can bring a picture in and lock the layer, then vectorize over it. This makes the step of vectorizing the logos much easier. What I really liked about this project was that it helped me to again feel comfortable with Adobe Illustrator. I was a little rusty with my AI skills, so making logos in the program really threw me into the deep end.

The Logos

Black and white are nice for a color scheme, so this was used on a few of the logos, but blue is a very powerful color as well. So two of the logos implement blue into them. These were all taken from the vectors seen above, but some of them not quite in the same organization that they were in above.

The moment you have all been waiting for…

Ok, there are four and not three logos. So I got carried away.

What I like about the first logo is that it is my name in lowercase. This makes it a little more fun and less formalized. I rounded the bottom of the “b” so that it looks a little more trendy, and I applied blue to it to give it some power.

The next logo is my name spelled out in bar code, and then cut to look like a sound wave. Seeing I want to end up in the music industry this is a creative way of making my name associated with something easily recognizable with music.

The third logo was an accident from the diamond shape in my sketches and vectors. I tried to align the bars and they did what you see in the logo. I really liked the design so I threw my nickname (212) in front of it to make a modern looking logo.

I almost always have a bandana hanging out of my back pocket. Just a little way to add some color to whatever I am wearing. My roommate suggested that I make a logo out of this look. My professor brought up the idea of bringing my name into it so that it would relate to me. The blue in this one also ties back to the first logo, invoking power and stability.

My favorite logo would have to be the pocket with the bandana. It it sleek, and unobtrusive. It mixes some complexity with simplicity to just the right level. I will most likely be using the first logo so that I have professionalism and fun mixed into one.
 

Lessons learned

Aside from the alignment issue that helped me to make the third logo, I also had an issue with using the pathfinder tool. It was a lot of CNTL+Z, but I eventually got a hang of how to work it to get what I needed. Then my professor helped me to see how I could make one shape, add and remove anchor points and get a better result than putting two shapes together.
 

Mockup

Here is what my logo could look like it printed on a business card.