Of the three logo concepts I had, I chose the first concept.
I chose this logo because it fit the overall image that I wanted to present professionally. The off-kilter, dynamic shape expressed my personality while showing my conceptual thinking skills with showing both my initials M + V, with the V visible in the negative space of the M. The stamp-like texture added a more human, organic feel which felt familiar and comforting and gave an interesting contrast to the digital, hard-edged nature of the work I want to be doing with UX/UI.
I initially had a lot of trouble deciding between concepts 1 and 2, and even put up a poll on Instagram to see which logo had the strongest first impression with my friends- non-design students, past IDEA alumni and peers from other IDEA cohorts voted and even gave some great ideas and feedback! Even after the votes favoured concept 1, I was still on the fence about it, as I liked how concept 2 looked on potential websites, but ultimately chose concept 1 because it truly fit my personal aesthetic.
I am very satisfied with my final logo and I don’t think I see myself changing it when I graduate. I would give myself a 9/10 overall. While I got stuck from time to time when it came to ideating, I was able to get myself out of those ruts pretty quickly because I was so excited for this project. Here’s the final logo!
Reflect on the ideation process. What did it teach you about yourself? Include a grade out of 10 for your ideation.
This sketching process has been super enlightening. For the past year and a half, I resigned myself to believing that I simply was not good at coming up with tons of ideas, but I realize now that it was all because I had restricted myself to working solely on my computer, which unconsciously made me edit my ideas before I even had all of them down. I know now that I should keep my ideating completely analog and on a sketchbook and only when I have an idea that I like after rounds of ideating, I can start redefining it on the computer.
This is the first time I filled up so many pages so quickly. I worked entirely in pen, so if there was something about a sketch I wanted to refine, I would completely redraw it with the new edits. I wished I could have taken a time-lapse of myself while doing this to see how the drawings just flowed right onto the page.
While I didn’t struggle very much with getting things on the page, I found that it was MUCH easier to come up with ideas for my peers. I would sometimes get stuck wondering if I’ve encompassed every single part of myself and my personality in this logo, but with my classmates, I obviously don’t know every single thing about them, just their general demeanour and interests, which made it much easier to come up with concepts just based on those. Overall I would grade myself 9/10 for my ideation process.
My logo sketches (L) vs my peers’ logo sketches for me (R). It’s so interesting getting to see how people work. While I only use gel pens and highlighters to put my ideas down, Terence uses a pencil while Grace uses a ballpoint pen to sketch. I also noticed how neat and lined up their sketches were along the paper rules hahahah I love noticing little quirks like that!
