How I design the new BlogMunch Logo? Part 1
(Disclaimer: I find my newly designed logo vaguely familiar. It could be a logo I have seen somewhere. Yet I must say I design this myself over the weekend. If there is something similar anywhere in the universe, it is purely coincidence.)
I am a cheapskate. I don’t wish to spend money on stuff like logos and theme as the income for this blog is bare minimum. But I do want something different and unique for my blog, so I decided to design my own logo. The two inspirations and workflow of my logo design comes from Gary Simon and David Airey.
Message to convey
I would guess “unique” would be the keyword. I am quite sick of looking at Web 2.0 logos with reflections all over the place. The other thing I consider is printing. I would like to print my logo on a T-shirt, so that I can vainly wear them all over the place to promote BlogMunch.
I did not thought much about the color scheme, though I would prefer red or orange within the logo. David Airey would have recommend I sketch out some design ideas first on pen and paper. But I can’t draw to save my life, so on to the typeface.
Typeface
Next I open a word document to try out different typefaces I like. I did one for all capitals and one for all lowercase.
I mix and match the fonts. I am trying to separate the word “BlogMunch” into two entities. The recent trend is mixing CAPs and lowercase. Using different colors is also popular. But I want more than that, so I use the plus sign, dot and pipe as accessories.
The above are several examples I come up with. I choose the one on the top left as there is a classy feel to it. The two fonts used are 
and 
.
At this step, you might want to ask why I did not do this in Photoshop. There are two reasons.
- It’s hard to list out all the fonts in Photoshop for comparison.
- I am not that good in Photoshop. Navigating and Cut&paste within Word is easier.
The Logo
At first, I wanted to have a picture of a mouth as basis for the BlogMunch logo. But most of the pictures I find are quite disgusting (I pity a dentist who have to look at these everyday) and I can’t find a good way to integrate it with the letters.
The Caterpillar came about when I type “munch” into Flickr. There are very high quality pictures of caterpillars in Flickr. I download a few and try it out with the letters.
(credit: MrClean1982)
This picture of a black swallowtail munching is my final choice. The main reason being the caterpillar is isolated with a homogenous background, it is easier to select out the subject. Of course, the picture itself is amazing.
After trying different configurations, I settled on the caterpillar on top. The Japanese characters are there as a sudden inspiration to fill up the bottom half, as the logo is too top heavy. Guess what do the characters mean?
The next step will be to vectorize the logo.
So ends the first part of my journey to a new logo design. How do you like it so far?
Click here to go to “How I design the new BlogMunch Logo? Part2″
Technorati Tags: logo design, caterpillar, fonts
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December 5th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
I have to say something after reading the disclaimer. Although I know that this logo was absolutely designed by the owner himself, but I don’t think that this disclaimer can work. A person who plagiarized should be pardon if he gave a sentence like this?
December 5th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Thanks for your comments. I have a couple of points to make:
1. There is a Chinese saying “?????”. It means you can’t be guilty without knowing. Even so, you have to try your best to find out if what you have done have already been done.
2. The disclaimer is not used as a “pardon” like what you say. It is meant to inform, so that if ever anyone came to me and claim trademark, I would be happy to take it down.
I hope I have answered you sufficiently. If not, I think we can debate more throughly offline.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:25 pm
ops, it seems WordPress cannot print out the Chinese correctly…well, nevermind.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
First, I know what is the Chinese saying although the Wordpress cannot work it out because I studied Chinese very well. heihei.
Second, I agree that this is only an information which actually means you are doing your best to avoid something but finally have to be failed.
Third, I still agree that you have to do something to show that this is an authentic work of you before you find out whether what you did have already been done. But you have done it below since you presented all the process of your design works and no need of this disclaimer.
lastly, based on your detailed design drafs, I don’t agree that it is a purely coincidence if something similar as yours appears later, it must be a plagiorism from you!
December 6th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
I just wanted to say that i really love your logo, it’s very nice and attractive. I wish i could do something as good, but i will try… Wish me luck! Hehe.
Keep up the great blog mate.
Marty.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Thanks a lot. I can’t do all the fancy,fancy stuff but I do know how to cut and paste and arrange different objects. That’s all I did to come up with the logo.
Do try it. You might surprised yourself. You might also wanna try going to a self hosted blog, so that you can add any logo you want.
Good Luck.
December 7th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Thanks for sharing your tips in creating logo! This is very useful.
December 7th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
@Mike, I am glad you like it. Stay tune for part2.
December 23rd, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Thanks for the kind mention!
I was on holiday, hence the late reply. Sadly, in my absence, someone stole my domain name, and you can now find my blog at http://www.davidairey.co.uk
Hope you’re well.
December 24th, 2007 at 9:30 am
I know about your stolen domain. Read it on my feed. Hope you get it back soon.
February 9th, 2008 at 1:14 am
I just wanted to say that logo is awesome. I was searching for tutorials and found this, worth giving it a try i guess