Logo Loco

Over the course of winter break, I've been primarily focusing on personal branding---putting a logo together for my resume, business cards, social networks, and also for fun. I decided it was time to take myself seriously and finally create one.

The closest thing I've ever had to a logo was my letterhead for this blog, Paperstack 5.

Oh yeah. And that silly little thing I came up with for CMPA 110.

This held up well for a short while. The main issue with this banner was that it was advertising my blog, not ME. I needed something that would promote myself for business, for the services in cartooning I offer. All I needed was a simple, easily reproduced logo.

I made my way over to LogoMoose.com--- a terrific website for viewing logos and gaining inspiration. Here are a few of my favorites:

My tastes ranged from cute and colorful to plain and simple. Most of the logos that caught my eye were all simple, bold, and clever. I knew I wanted something clear and iconic.

The biggest battle I faced was with my enormous last name. "Naffziger" is a pretty intimidating set of letters---and it was hard to make it less domineering. I thought of a clever way to shorten it, maybe with a play on words, but I found no way around using the full name. "Lisa Naffziger, cartoonist" had to appear in the logo. I just wasn't sure how.

My font choice would be the biggest factor is eliminating the confusion of my huge name. My original course of action was to stick to mainly sans-serif fonts. These would be clean and would perhaps shorten the appearance of my last name. This jumbled mass is a selection of my first few favorites.

There were several fonts to pick from. I spent the majority of the evening at the kitchen table with my family, asking them to tally their favorites and then narrow down their choices to three fonts.

From there I toyed around with different logo styles. I am really font of the 'sticker' look, so I gave that a shot. My results were just...so-so...

After a couple more days of mixing and matching, I thought I had a winner.

Unfortunately it looked a little too familiar.

That was a shame.
So I scrapped that concept altogether and found and entirely new set of fonts to choose from. This time, I collected 'handwriting' fonts, thinking this would give my logo the whimsical, cartoony look I was after.

It was a really struggle to select a font out of that category. I liked them all. (All fonts courtesy of Dafont.com, by the way). These were a few new concepts I came up with.

It sure was a toss-up between these fonts and their colors. Overall, I found that the plain, white font worked best with what I was going for. Any strokes, dropshadows, or embosses on the font looked pretty dumb. With the help of my family and art school folks, I was able to pick #5 shown above.

This font was legible, simple, clear, fun, and made my last name easy on the eyes.

Picking a subtext was a little tough as well. The top version shown seemed more professional. The bottom version looked more related and cohesive. After a community vote, I went with the first version.

We'll see what comes next. :)