I've had various opportunities to design logos over the years. Some of them have even been used. :)
I've done quite a bit of work for various science fiction
convention-related groups. One of the earlier jobs was a logo for the
sixth annual Potlatch convention. This logo is the design that they
decided to use. I used Adobe's Penumbra font because it's a multiple master font, so I
could adjust, say, the O to make it "bolder" at the small size so that it would
match the bigger P.
| Three years later, when Potlatch returned to Seattle, I was again asked to do some logo proposals. The chairman wanted something "writerly," as they were going to be focusing more on writing that year. My first batch was the following three designs. | |
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I thought that the typewriter-style one was the closest to what had been requested, but the calligraphic one was the most popular. They didn't like the Roman numerals (which I thought a pity, I still like that design the best of all.) So I did some variations on the calligraphic one, and one variation on the typewriter one.
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The logo they selected to use is the one at the upper right, with the word "Nine" in it. The font is Poetica.
![[A logo for the Con Runners of America]](http://media.howell.seattle.wa.us:380/art/logos/cra/cra.gif)
Somebody's got to throw these shindigs, and in 1998, I was privy to an
online discussion about how maybe it would be useful to have an official Con Runner's
Association. Somebody even went so far as to draw up a logo featuring a beanie (relevant
for historical reasons I won't go into here). I did an alternative logo, stealing the
beanie idea. As far as I know, nothing actually came of it all.
Life is not only about going to science fiction conventions.
There's also games to play. I hang out with a group known as Seattle Cosmic Game Night,
or Seattle Cosmic for shorter. Wouldn't you know it, people started wanting T-shirts
that displayed their affiliation with the group. That meant we needed a logo.
This potential design was created by my partner Eric; I simply refined it.
The logo for the retail ebook division of the Seattle Book Company was designed to be "anti-dot.com." Not 3-D, not bright, not shiny and smooth. Everybody on the Web was doing that. This was to be warm, intimate, hand-drawn, and old. Artist Margaret Organ-Kean was instrumental in creating the pillar. The font comes from Adobe's Herculanum (also seen on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although I used it first. Hmph) but I created two more alphabets' worth of letters in order to avoid obvious repetition. In particular, the three "A"s that run down the middle of the logo were visually disruptive until I created the aggressively atypical A in "digital."
The logo for the science fiction publishing group is an entirely different matter. This one needed to be edgy and contemporary, fit on a spine (which means it needs to be more or less square) and identifiable at extremely small sizes. Both the asymmetric star and the vertical placement of the name create a very dynamic, "in motion" sense to the logo. The rotated starburst also (unintentionally) echos the asymmetric twinkle from the Iceworks logo. The font is Penumbra.
The parent company, Seattle Book Company, needed a clean, crisp logo. Nothing to techno-freaky, without being totally "banker" safe, either. Because the parent corporation wasn't going to really have a massive Web presense (that would be for the various subdivisions), the SBC logo was designed to be at its best on letterhead or a business card. Someplace where the thin clean lines would really be sharp and crisp. Again, the hint of edginess comes from asymmetry, in this case, the horizontal rules that also subtly emphasize the word "Book."
Of course, sometimes you have to put the logo on the web. For occasions when high-definition reproduction wasn't practical, the version below is the acceptable substitute.
The cutting-edge ebook manufacturing system developed by SBC needed its own identity. In this case, it was all about being 21st century web-enabled technology. A bit of subtlety almost lost in this online version is the fact that "Rosetta" and "Machine" aren't actually the same font. You can see it by comparing the letters "E" and "A" between the two words.
The web site designers for one of the first versions of the site went with a purple color scheme, so I prepared a full treatment of the logo for them. Since this is pretty much the opposite of the AlexLit logo, it gets to be all 3-D. The font is once again the flexible Penumbra.
I was mystified as to why people had so much trouble remembering my email address, since it was simply [my first name]@[my last name] dot [my city] dot [my state] dot [my country]. How hard could that be? Too hard. So I went hunting for a cool domain, and found to my astonishment that nobody'd snatched up "Grand Fenwick," the imaginary tiny European country from "The Mouse that Roared" books and movies. What fun!
Since my ex-husband's a Registered Herbalist, it naturally followed that our house was the Royal Botanical Gardens and Herbarium of the Dutchy of Grand Fenwick. With a title like that, it needed a seriously over-the-top logo. Yes, it's hard to read. You're not supposed to read it; you're supposed to be mightily impressed with all the curlicues. Besides, I had too much fun fitting all those capital letters together in the first place to go back and mess it up just for the sake of readability. Poetica, and Poetica Roman Caps.
Last, although certainly not least, is the oldest logo on the page, the one
I made for my freelance typesetting business before I was sucked up by Wizards of the Coast. Adobe Garamond Titling, and Small Caps. The initial "S" was hand-transformed to blend with the rest of the word.