Creative Process - Logo

Those of you who have visited my site this morning probably noticed the new logo placed smack in the middle at the top, greeting all those who come to the site.

It's simple. It's easy to read. It's unique.

Why do I say it's unique? No one else will have the hummingbird symbol, considering I created it from the photograph Floating on Air, an image I shot in Alma, Wisconsin.

With a degree in Advertising and a concentration on the arts and photography, I knew I had it in me to create a logo that would represent what I wanted it to (photography with a focus on nature) in a subtle way, but it was a long creative journey to get there. My point in this blog post is to tell all of you logo designers out there, amateur, professional, whatever your ranking is, to not give up. The idea is in you, you just have to get all of the ideas you won't use out of your system first, which is exactly what I did, over and over again.

Those of you who have been following me for some time know that I have gone through a few logos over my time as a photographer.

My first logo was when I was RE Photography. Why did I ditch that name and logo? Just Google "RE Photography" and tell me what happens. Do it.

The name change came largely in part because of the lack of creativity with the name RE Photography. Clearly there's a lot of studios out there using the name, and I wanted a name that is unique to my business.

Spalderick Studios was born.

After a few years of sharing nature photography, I started booking weddings and senior portrait sessions. I knew a guy who started to DJ for weddings, so we came up with this wonderful idea that we could do package deals together. Need a DJ and a photographer? We'll hook you up.

With that, this logo was born, which was thus far our longest standing logo:

So why did we walk away from it? The guy stopped pursuing DJing. He still has all of his equipment and plays at home, but with a full time job, and then having plenty of things to occupy his time, he didn't feel the desire to pursue the road of being a DJ. With that information in mind, having headphones over a camera no longer made sense if Spalderick Studios was not going to offer music services anymore.

​Now starts the long, tedious journey to the logo I have now.

It starts with a list, and some small doodles.

It may be running through your mind "What the hell" or "Why did she choose those animals?" and I could tell you the reasons why, but let's just say that this list ended up going nowhere.

Below are the drawings that followed the creation of this list.

Umm.... scary right? Looks like a black eye. TOTALLY NOT what I was going for.

<< I almost went with either of these. I liked the simplicity of it, but decided it didn't quite communicate what I wanted it to. vv

One of my creative friends, Dawn, then suggested that I try putting an aperture in the middle so that it would communicate "photography" more strongly.

The cyclops moose was born. I obviously needed to head a different direction. I started drawing simplified animals over an aperture.

I'm thoroughly convinced that the one on the left was strongly influenced by Pokémon Go.

I didn't like these at all. They weren't communicating what I wanted them to, and they just were not at all the path that I had originally envisioned. Ensue frustration:

​The top one was really a simplified owl with a partial aperture around it, but after my friend, Jared, pointed out that it looked like an anime character, I couldn't unsee it. Now you can't either, huh.

Jared's mention of how it looks like an anime character led to my humorous drawing of a girl with hair that is a partial aperture on the bottom, which I never was going to use for a logo, but did make for a good laugh.

---

Next just came the phase of "Just draw whatever the hell pops into your head". It's a fun phase, but usually not very successful, unless you hit a hot spot, which I did not.

Next came a slight breakthrough. Another idea that I thought I may stick with, but if you've ever done logo design, you know that if you aren't 100% happy with the idea, then it's not the design you want to stick with.

Clever, right? Using the aperture as a frame for a nature scene within it. Now, I have to tell you why all of these previous attempts didn't sit well with me.

Google "Photography Logos" and you will find that almost EVERYONE uses an aperture symbol. It's ridiculous how much it is used. I have this problem with using ideas that many others have used, so I decided I needed to walk away from the aperture. Completely. Bye, bye, aperture symbol that took me a few attempts to master. Bye, bye.

I moved on to something different. What if I kept the idea of landscape, but without the aperture?

I kind of liked it, but let's be honest. It was strongly influenced by something I had seen when I Googled "Photography Logos" and thus the idea was no longer pursued.

I decided to move on to trying to create a logo on my computer. I'm sure I'm not the only person on this planet who feels that you tend to think differently, artistically speaking, when you start creating digital art, versus pen on paper.

It's true. If you don't feel that way, good for you. You're probably more artistically inclined that I.

I liked where these were going. The beginning phase of the left and right columns was wonderful. I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. As with all ideas though, it has to look better as you pursue it, right? Can't get worse. Well, it got worse. In my opinion. Not worse in the way of "This looks horrible" but worse in the way of "I feel as if I'm walking away from the path I want to be on".

Staring at the ones on the left made me realize that they reminded me of a Final Fantasy logo. Apparently, I play too many video games. First, Pokémon Go haunts my logo design process, and now Final Fantasy.
​What is going on?!
It wasn't over, because the next logo contains a straight up Triforce from my favorite game series, Legend of Zelda.

I walked away from the project. I went on my cruise, spent a few weeks prior to that just not thinking about it at all, which is sometimes the best thing you can do. Then, for whatever reason, it hit me. I went super simple, super sweet, and boom, I had it. Okay, maybe it wasn't that quick... there was this long process of choosing the fonts, but either way after I had the idea it took me less than 24 hours to finalize. 

Voila! Le Logo. <3

I also decided to rename the business to Imbeccable Images. It's more catchy and more memorable.