Category: Logo Design

If you’ve ever looked at the world’s most popular logos before, you’d be surprised to see that a good amount of them are really just letters. Most logos are just stylized type. The thing is, while it sounds simple to make, there’s actually a lot of thought that goes into it.

I realized this when I attempted to create logo stickers of my name. The two different logos I tried to make stickers of are the initials of my first and last name and a shortening of my last name. Here are my three favourite attempts:

Why do these logos look good design wise?

I believe that all these different logos work for their own reasons.

The first logo is an illustrated capital letter. It looks good because of it’s elegant design and it’s gradient colour.

The second logo is drawn in a graffiti style. It works because of it’s energetic look and stylized lettering. The black outline resembling dripping paint also helps it feel like actual graffiti.

The third logo is a monogram. The reason it looks good is because of it’s shape. The logo is made to fit within the shape of a square which gives it visual balance.

What did I learn from this project?

Every design in this assortment of differently styled logos has it’s own unique style. They all look good but in a completely different way. The secret to designing a good logo starts with finding a style. Making a logo using only type can be difficult. Some letters don’t fit together as well as others which can make certain combinations challenging.

If you’re interested in learning about other types of logos, I’ve also tried creating a logo that didn’t use type. You can learn about how I did that in my blog post, “Creating an iconic logo: Harder than it seems!”

Logo creation: While it might seem easy there are a lot of secrets people don’t know about it.

Every big company has it’s own recognizable logo. Disney, McDonald’s, Blockbuster Video, they’re all iconic. You’d be able to tell what they are from just a quick glance. While most of them are simplistic, theres actually a lot of thought that goes into creating them.

Recently, I have been exploring ways to create my own logos for my personal branding. I actually came up with a few of them that I really like, although it hard then I expected. I chose to create mouse related logos as they are one of my favourite animals:

How I started creating the logo

You may have noticed that I’ve also added glasses to my logos because they are similar to the ones I sometimes wear in real life. I did this to incorporate aspects of myself in my logos. They are meant to be representative of my own personal brand. Everyone who is looking to get into graphic design should have their own personal logo and branding and this is me trying to do that for myself. Through this, I realized that creating a logo has a lot of tricks and specifics involved.

This is something I found out the hard way when my first draft was a lot more detailed then it should have been.

While I did have a rough start with logo design, my friends still did enjoy my design for this mouse and thought it was cute. Even though I didn’t end up using him for my logo, he’s still pretty awesome and he me to eventually create an actually good design for a logo / icon for my personal brand. I actually think that having a one is important for all graphic designers. So if you don’t yet have a logo you should definitely try your hand at it.