I know there are several people reading this blog who are interested in learning a little about graphic design. I often get questions about what programs and tools I use as well as specific questions like “How do you design a logo for a website?” In the past, I’ve not really talked much about those kinds of things because that’s not what this blog was about. But in an effort to make this blog about the whole of life and not just some aspects of it, I have decided the time has come to talk about design now and then.

If design is not your cup of tea, then feel free to skip these kinds of posts. (Please don’t skip the other topics, though, ok?  )

Some of the tools I use

So, first, I generally use a fairly well-known program called Adobe Photoshop CS4 when I create logos and what-not. Sometimes, if I am creating a vector drawing, I will use another program in the Adobe CS4 Suite called Illustrator. If I’m designing an image specifically for the web, I may use yet another program called Fireworks. But I actually like Photoshop most out of the 3. If I’m designing primarily for print, I use a combination of Photoshop and another Adobe program called InDesign that’s kinda like a hybrid between something like Photoshop or Illustrator and Microsoft Word.

Anyway, my second tool is a MacBook Pro laptop, circa 2006. It has 2gb of RAM and a 120gb harddrive running OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard). The machine is powered by a 2.33ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It’s one of the first MacBook’s with the Intel processor and I’ve been very happy with it, especially since it still runs just as fast as the day I bought it. I also have a 750gb external harddrive where I store the majority of my files as well as a Wacom tablet that I use when drawing something.

Why I chose these elements for the logo

My new personal logo is quite simple in terms of elements. It consists of 2 images (one a vector drawing of a coffee cup and the other is the phoenix).

When I design something, I like it to have some personal significance. And I chose a coffee cup because, if you know me, you know that I never go anywhere without my coffee! In fact, I’ve had the same mug since I was a junior in high school. It’s a special mug that was given to me by a very good friend at the time and I still use it every day. Although my actual mug doesn’t look like the vector coffee mug, it signifies my love of coffee and that special cup.

The phoenix is an element I have loved since I first learned of it while studying mythology in junior high. I think my love of drawing fantasy and mythological characters was born out of that study and is one of the things that solidified my choice of becoming a designer in the first place. I think the phoenix is particularly special because it signifies a variety of things I’m currently experiencing – change, rebuilding, continually moving forward no matter what. And it just reminds me that everything is happening in perfect order.

Putting it together

I actually started the phoenix quite some time ago and it’s one of those designs I keep coming back to again and again trying to get it just right. I played with a lot of color variations before I finally settled on the pink and blue gradient.  One reason for the pink is that, you may remember, that’s the color I chose way back in January as my part of my theme for 2010. The blue is simply because it looks good with the pink! No, really – blue is one of my favorite colors and it just does go good with the pink – but it’s also because it makes it kinda look like the phoenix is coming out of a fire, which is what the whole story of the phoenix is all about – renewal.

When I first decided I was ready to change my logo, I knew I wanted it to be simple. The old logo is quite simple as well – just my name, the coffee mug and a dark red background with rounded corners. I also knew I wanted to incorporate the phoenix and of course, I *had* too keep my coffee cup in there! I use that coffee cup everywhere online and it’s one of my “signature” styles. So, there was no way I was going to leave it out. It’s even at the bottom of each page of my design website.

And I wanted to keep my name in there as well – it’s a personal logo, after all. But I wanted to use a more creative font. The font I chose for my name is called Phonetica and I like how simple and yet creative it looks without being too frilly or unreadable. The font for the tagline is simply the very basic, standard serif font, Georgia Italic.

I played around with the flow of each piece in a variety of ways before I finally curved my name around the phoenix’s wing. Once I did that, I knew I’d found the right style. It was then a matter of playing with the placement of the cup and the tagline. I found the cup went perfectly just below my name and almost made it look as though the name was the steam from the hot coffee! After moving the tagline around nearly 50 times, I finally left it in a block of text and snuggled up against the other side of the phoenix. It took a bit of adjusting to get to a good size but I am happy with the way it turned out.

Changes to the initial designs

In the original mockups I posted the other day, I used a black circle as the background but when I began playing with the new header design, I found the black background for the logo just didn’t work very nicely. I didn’t like the way it looked in the header. As you can see, I ended up removing that element and going with a transparent background. It looks white here on the blog since the page is white. You’ll also notice in the final header design that you see the header background behind it. That’s what transparent means in design – it means that element is effectively see through.

Final thoughts

The base color of the phoenix is actually a dark red with the gradient colors applied over top. (In fact, that’s why the blue middle looks more on the purple side of the color spectrum rather than totally blue.) The reason for the main color underneath to be dark red is that there way be times I want a more simplified version and this way, it’s still in keeping with the overall look of the blog and my other places around the web. I can change it fairly quickly and without causing a lot of hassle as you can see in the new header above. I enlarged the tagline to make it more prominent but the core of the logo is still intact.

I hope you enjoyed learning about how I came up with the logo and how I put it together. While it’s certainly not very in depth, I do hope it gave you some insight into the basics of creating graphics. We’ll talk more about design again soon. Perhaps next time, I’ll tell you all about creating the header. Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts! I’d love to hear them, as always.

Until then . . . keep blazin’!