Posted 12 May 2007, by Aaron
For the last two years in my spare time I have been studying New Media Design at college. It all comes to an next month, and for the end of the course I need to exhibit all my work at the end of year exhibition. The exhibition serves as a great opportunity for showcasing my work to potential clients, employers and other contacts. So I need to brand myself.
For the past couple of days I’ve been very busy putting together a marketing plan for myself, brainstorming ideas for a personal logo and sketching some rough thumbnails. I must confess, I can’t compete with Mr Airey in terms of sheer numbers, but I got a good couple of pages of sketches done.
I will post the sketches soon, but I really don’t want to open up that can of worms just yet. Below is my preferred design which I have drawn up in Illustrator.
So this goes out to all creative professional and interested readers alike, what do you honestly think?
I’m really interested to hear your honest and instinctive feelings about this: Do you like the logo? Is there anything you’d change? What do you think is my rational behind the design? And who do you think I’m pitching myself at?
Many thanks for the recent comments: Jim, billyjacks, webee, Asgeir, Tara and Evil Dildo.
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Tags:Branding, Design, Illustrator, Logos, Marketing, Personal
Hi Aaron,
Firstly, thanks for the kind mention. I’m looking forward to seeing your sketches!
Watch your kerning is the first point on the logo. The spacing on the ‘aaron’ makes the ‘russell’ appear squashed. Also, the gaps where the mark overlaps on itself will be lost when the logo is reduced.
What does the mark represent about you? My initial interpretation was it looks like a charity ribbon, then I saw the stylised ‘A’ (was that your take on it?).
I agree with David about the type. Maybe you could experiment with different typefaces, though I understand why you’ve chosen the elegant serif font.
My first thought was the pink cancer campaign symbol that you see all over the place.
The black and white ones conveys some kind of elegance and professionalism, so the look and feel is fine. I’d like to understand what the symbol represents.
To me it seems your target group is somewhat conservative and business oriented.
Yup. I’m afraid that I saw an inverted charity ribbon also.
I agree with David on the kerning for ‘aaron’ - perhaps make your first name slightly larger than your surname, which would solve the problem?
But, hey - everyone’s a critic, right? 
I have to admit, I immediately thought of a charity ribbon too is is such a well known symbol. Designing a logo for yourself is so hard, I desperately need to do my personal logo too, my existing one is terrible. I will be good to see your sketches to see how you got to this idea and other avenues you explored.
I agree with everyone about the charity thing. But I think you’ve tracked Aaron on purpose so it ranges with Russell and that’s a bit different and therefore eye-catching. I wonder what it looks like if you swapped the L’s.
Many thanks for all the comments. I posted this logo immediately after finishing it yesterday, and when I woke up this morning I had a gut feeling about the stylised ‘A’ looking too much like a charity ribbon.
I was aware it did yesterday because one of the first colours I tried it in was red and it immediately looked like the AIDs ribbon. The reason I inverted it to white-out was to try and distance it from that connotation.
However your comments back up my feelings that it isn’t distanced enough. I think I’ll go back to the drawing board on this, but unfortunately don’t have a lot of time. I need to settle on something by the end of tomorrow at the latest.
Thanks for the comments on the kerning - it was intentional to align the two names but maybe I’ll try a different layout with the name on one line.
Thanks again for the comments. Keep your eyes posted because I’ll have another design to show soon.
Don’t Settle. ESPECIALLY on your own logo. If you don’t think it’s perfect, keep working on it.
I dont think stacking your name is going to work, regardless of the typeface you choose. The negative space the ascenders creates is horrible on the eye unless you go all caps, which you shouldn’t, . I would also capitalize your name unless there is a specific concept behind lc.
Also, when you create a mark, the stylized a, you should give the black outline a bit more thickness so when it overlaps, there is a thicker black space between the counter and the stems. I recommend printing a proof at the smallest size you are going to allow your logo to be viewed. Then optimized the space im talking about at that size. If you were to shrink what you have now, it would bleed into each other, creating a different mark than what you designed. If for some reason you foresee or have the need to enlarge it for signage or whatever, you can always have two or three versions of the mark to optimize the view, i.e. at&t Logo (count the lines in the globe sometime).
its been a year, hope you’ve come up with something you like!
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David Airey :: Creative Design ::
12 May 2007, 9:24 pm