At the very end of this self-branding journey, I chose to go with the third logo, the “Mech hero”. Because it showcases my abilities through the logo itself and achieves what I wanted when I first thought about designing a logo for myself. The aesthetics of my interests are present, it shows that I can illustrate and combine things for a new solution, and I now have a mascot of which I still need to design the lower body, but a mascot character nonetheless. I also love the aesthetic it has, comparing it to logos I appreciate and enjoy.

I’d say that I’m satisfied enough with this logo because I would love to use all the logos I designed. Each one brings something different to showcase and feels like they could all be seen being used. 

As a final grade, I’d give myself a 9/10 and justify this with how much thinking I put into it all. Although there were moments wherein I confused myself, I believe that trudging through it all ended up with 3 logos that are 100% authentic to me. The final redesigns of the logos took everything that everyone said and kept it secondary to how I really felt about it. So I boiled the critiques down to what I believe was meant and rebuilt the logos until I was happy with them and their applications.

Mind Map & 200 Sketches

Throughout the process of building a logo for my brand, I found that taking an introspective of what I do is much easier than trying to figure out my aesthetics. For example, when I take a look at my hobbies I sometimes wondered if I did it enough to consider it a part of my brand. What really helped me along in this princess was asking friends to take a look at my web map and sketching some logos with aesthetics that they see in me. It also really helped by talking to them and just having a conversation on what kinds of impressions we all gave each other.

I found it so interesting to try to “stay true to yourself” when normally I don’t think about that.

In ideation, I would give myself a 9 out of 10, ideating for me is fairly easy. Something fun was thinking about the other names to be known because I treated it like being a superhero with another identity. One thing I’d say I lacked a bit in was trying to figure out how to incorporate 50/50 text and imagery/iconography.

Brief + Moodboard

Putting together a mood board about myself felt odd. The strangest thing was trying to figure out if the images I was putting in were representations of myself or if I was recalling memories where those were the strongest and clearest images that stood out. 

In the end what I had placed in my moodboard was a mix of both my aesthetics that defined my style, personality, and memories that gave an insight of my childhood and how I turned out the way I did.

It turns out that, I am incredibly nostalgic about recurring senses of my childhood, very influenced by many things from culture to things I found cool once, and have an odd sense. Sometimes finding things that people would turn away from appealing, such as the smell of chinese calligraphy ink, or the taste of century egg.

I asked a childhood friend if the images matched who I was, and then I asked a family member just to be sure I was accurately and critically describing myself, and not an idealized version of myself.

If I were to give myself a mark out of 10, I’d say that I worked hard enough that I deserve a 9.

RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Finding research for this project was fairly easy. Mainly asking friends to describe me in a few words, recalling things I’ve heard in the past, and looking at old projects where I’d have to describe myself. The analysis was just distilling info, nothing too difficult. However ideating and executing the actual written parts, while trying to make it full of personality was ridiculously difficult. I’m trying to say it out loud, which does help, but then adding professionalism and putting it on the actual ad to see how it looked like, really messed me up since I’d constantly reevaluate if it was something that sounded like me or if I was putting on a voice. Plus I dragged some parts out to inform what I like in terms of hobbies, like small quirks and points of curiosity. But I’m not sure it turned out that great. 

Completing the project took about 8 hours altogether.
Almost 2 hours were dedicated to the research, drawing that fancy art in the background with multiple variations was about 1.5 hours. Then it was 2 excruciating hours of going back and forth with the text. Ideating took about .5 hours across the 8 hours, and was quick since I was going with the flow to be as natural as possible.

I’d say that I deserve an 8/10. My text is as good as I could muster it up to be, however there are definitely much better ways of putting words together that I haven’t comprehended. Other aspects are straightforward and I tried to put it together in an interesting cohesive way.