Self Branding Logo

As part of my portfolio, I felt the need to make my own personal logo the very first page, however, it needs to be re-created. Based on a piece I had created in the past out when I was bored, I created the base shape at the top of my logo. This piece was created in Illustrator using the pen tool, ellipse tool, offset path and rotate tool. Honestly, the process is quite simple, only half the design needs to be made, the other can be reflected. The result however, I find to be quite a complicated looking, but aesthetically pleasing. I then hunted around for a font that would work well with this construction. Eventually I stumbled across the font 'Speakeasy' which is the font you can see above. After spending a great deal of time working with alignment, structure and kerning of the text, I eventually settled with this final logo. My intention for this logo was to have it placed on the first page of my portfolio. Seeing as the portfolio is selling myself, it only made sense to me for my logo to be the first thing anyone looking through my portfolio should see. This will spill over to more then my portfolio however, this will be placed as the header for my blog, will be going on my business cards and, if I get around to making one, will go on my website.

Alternative Techniques-Harbour House

Using Illustrator I was able to create all of my logo ideas for Harbour House. The client had said that they liked the use of negative space in logos, and so I thought I would focus on that as a starting point. Clearly my first idea was far more successful then my second. Playing on the House part of the company name, I used the direct selection tool to manipulate a H into a house structure, and then used the shapes tools and pathfinder tools to create a small door silhouette to complete the house as it was not very obvious that that is what I was going for without it.

I then looked into using basic shapes and type to create a clean, simple logo which I feel I did rather successfully, with the addition of a gradient to finish it off. I then returned to my first idea after thinking about trying to give the negative space house a 3D effect, and while I feel the result is not all that bad, the original idea is far superior.

I then created several ideas focusing mostly on the type, using different fonts and techniques to manipulate and create a range of different ideas.

Finally, I thought it would be worth exploring the use of shape in logos, and after some research, I saw that many shapes are created using the ellipse tool to create clean curves. Using this and the rotate tool, I was able to create two, very similar, ideas.

After I had create some logo ideas, I tool the best and placed them into different branding formats, such as, business cards, compliments slips and letter heads. The business cards I was especially happy with thanks to the ideas of having pieces cut out to give the business cards a unique aspect.

As you can see, my work placement gave me plenty of time to work on logo ideas and place them in different elements, experimenting with different ways to present them on said formats, which is something I rarely leave myself the time to do.

Phonica Logo alterations

Once I was pleased with the actual packaging mechanics, I moved my attention to what would be placed on the packaging. Thanks to my research, I was aware that the Phonica website was very clean and modern in appearance, reflecting the actual Phonica logo nicely. I wanted to show this style in the packaging, so I thought I would keep everything very simple by changing the logo in different ways and not adding anything major to the design of the packaging besides the occasional border.

Using by simple techniques and combinations, I was able to produce these variations of the Phonica logo to be placed on my packaging ideas. I used very basic techniques such as simple copy in paste, scaling, changing opacity and using Pathfinder tools to create all of these designs. While the techniques were very basic, i'd like to think that I used them quite creatively to create these pieces.