I got
really dissatisfied with my previous portfolio logo, so I decided to re-do it. (For reference, [
this] is what the original logo looked like.) It's nice and simplistic, with the most distinctive features being the solid square stroke around the text and the unique traits of the font used (Track). I had every reason to be satisfied with it, as it was clean and minimalist... but that was the problem. It wasn't a good representation of my style.
That, and it took all of five minutes to make.
A logo is the face of a project or company, so you have to have a clear objective first and foremost. Unfortunately, I learned this AFTER making my new logo. I went into Photoshop without so much as a sketch; I only had an idea that came to me in the middle of the night after waking up from a particularly crazy dream. Hopefully, that explains why the first re-made logo I created looks terrible. Here it is, in all its ****ing ugly glory:
Click to see full-size... if you dare
The background is transparent btw, imgur just has a thing where it inserts a black background beneath thumbnails of transparent stuff
So I'm going to pick apart that goddamn eyesore. It has too many colors, and it would make me seem like a TV company. Don't ask me what I was thinking, because I OBVIOUSLY WASN'T THINKING AT ALL. My mind was drawing such a blank that I legitimately thought using a TV color bars cube as a logo base for my graphic design portfolio would be a good idea.
After tolerating the design for a grand total of three hours, I finally moved on over to the drawing pad. I took what I liked about the re-design - the cube/square theme - and worked off of that. I have four 'N's in my name, so I initially drew a four walls/squares logo, with a stylized N emblazoned in each diagonal square. I liked the concept, but unfortunately it seemed rather flat and uninteresting to me. So, the challenge was - how do I create a 3-dimensional logo?
That question was the turning point. Think, the heavens opening and angelic music sounding. Or something, idk. After further experimentation with skew and distortion, I settled upon the logo design which I use now. At first, the text on all three visible sides of the cube were contained in square strokes, but I later removed the stroke from the top and right sides, to show less confinement and more freedom/flexibility. The final step was to add a drop shadow - which helps the logo stand out from webpages that may match the text color of a side - and with that, the design was finalized.