August 28th, 2009 — Design

Logo Legacy

For­ward

I’ve been desig­ning under my own name for a while. As a result there have been many ver­sions of my per­so­nal logo. Today I’ve gathe­red them in one place for a short review.

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Logo One

The first ite­ra­tion of this very web­site was the har­bin­ger of the very first “travisneilson.com” logo. As has been said pre­viously this site was put up in about an hour and, sadly, las­ted nearly a year. Empha­si­zing the dif­fe­rent parts in the name by using various font weights, this quick type­set­ting was accom­pa­nied my a small silhouette of yours truly.

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Logo Two

Ins­pi­red by a maga­zine cover about print design, this logo was a move­ment to con­vey that same idea: that I design for print. The pro­cess colors are set among regis­tra­tion and other industry mar­kings. This design made its way into a prin­ted port­fo­lio I used for a while, not as a logo, but as a graphic ele­ment and not much more.

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Logo Three

The pro­cess in desig­ning this one was very fun. I prin­ted out a stro­ked Hoe­fler Text and scrib­bled in the fill with a no.2 pen­cil. The logo accom­pa­nied a very D.I.Y. Style online port­fo­lio. It had the appea­rance of a rug­ged paper taped to a brick wall. How very punk rock, I know.

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Logo Four

A ran­dom whim lead me to draft up this logo for a busi­ness card, (hell yes, with roun­ded cor­ners.) Slightly over­zea­lous on my part I think now that I look back on it, as I still have about 400 of these in a box, yet none of my other mar­ke­ting tools use this logo. Still, I like it a lot. And there was that web­site that was live for about a week. The swashy nature of the pre­vious logo influen­ced the pro­gres­sion here in a very obvious way.

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Logo Five

This logo is based on a modi­fied ver­sion of Hel­ve­tica Neue, I twea­ked the ‘t’ and the ‘r’ slightly. This logo was used for a very long time, and in some ins­tan­ces, still is. The bold nature of the name was a good fit for a ver­sion of this web­site. Varia­tions were made for dif­fe­rent mate­rials — a pat­tern, for a boo­klet that ser­ved as a port­fo­lio for a time, for example.

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Logo Six

This current ver­sion of the site star­ted as a sec­ret pro­ject. A “sec­ret photo jour­nal” if you will. It was found in a sub­do­main (journal.travisneilson.com). A place where I pos­ted pho­tos I take. In fact, the first few months of the archi­ves here are what cons­ti­tu­ted that site. This logo was a varia­tion of logo five, inten­ded to show the rela­tionship of the two sites. The main page being the port­fo­lio dis­pla­ying logo five.

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Logo Seven

When I deci­ded to merge my port­fo­lio and the sec­ret photo jour­nal, or rather let my photo jour­nal become my port­fo­lio, I modi­fied the logo only slightly to fit the new con­tent. I really like that ampersand.

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Logo Eight

After loo­king at logo seven for a few days I rea­li­zed the rea­son I didn’t like it — it was based on the wrong pre­mise. The rea­son logo six wor­ked is because it rela­ted to logo five, and repre­sen­ted a sub­si­diary por­tion of my site. Now that there was only one uni­fied site, the logo had to stand on its own.

I really like the con­cept of an aste­risk. It is a cha­rac­ter that has no express pur­pose other than to pull atten­tion to itself. After strug­gling with the deci­sion to allow a mark of such anony­mity be my iden­ti­fier, I deci­ded to go with it. My sim­plest logo yet. Hope it lasts.

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Conc­lu­sion

It was fun to look back and note the pro­gres­sion and flow of logic bet­ween one ver­sion to the next. Good times.