I have made a simple logo design, depicting two R’s back to back, with an aperture in the middle to fill in the spot where there would be an opening in the R’s. The R’s are for my initials, Ryen Rodriguez. I chose an aperture because I really like photography, and if I ever take it seriously, this could possibly become my actual logo. It took me a while to think of a good logo design idea, partly because I really wanted to incorporate my initials somehow. I was originally going to add a camera to the logo as well, behind the R’s, and connected to the aperture, as this would be the aperture for the camera, but I came to the conclusion that this would make the logo look crowded, so I stuck with simplicity. I was inspired by another students work, using their initials back to back like I did. They made their logo look really nice, and I think I achieved the same quality.
While creating my logo, I tried to make the design very balanced, from one side to the other. There isn’t much depth in the logo, so foreground and background had little effect on the final outcome. My logo is fairly simple and easily replicated as well. The audience doesn’t have to dive too deep to understand what the logo would represent either. The logo also has a good amount of figure-ground to it, either you’re seeing back to back R’s or an aperture set up on a tripod. Most people would be able to see both though. I used the line segment tool, the shape builder tool, and the rectangle tool the most often when I was creating my design in Illustrator. The aperture itself has a radial gradient effect on it and the outer closing part has a linear gradient on it.
None of my fellow students critiqued my work, so I had to make revisions based solely on what I had noticed needed a little extra work. I had come back to the idea of adding a camera in the back of the logo,and attempted to incorporate it, but again, it appeared to be much too overwhelming in the logo and would distract an audiences eyes easily. I increased the stroke of the R’s so that the outline would appear bolder and stand out more in comparison to the aperture. I think this made a significant difference in the quality of my logo, and makes it feel more complete.
Here are links to sites I used during my research:
http://www.ideabook.com/tutorials/logo_design/stepbystep_logo.html
http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo-design-tips/
http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/5-branding-basics-every-logo-designer-should-know/
RR Blog 