Logo Design Round-Up Part 13 – How Designers Promote & Brand Themselves

This is Part 13 of the Logo Design Round-Up series. This ongoing series showcases a collection of logos and brand marks, self submitted by a bunch of freelance designers and creative folk in many creative areas. These designers use the logos to sell, promote, brand and market their various skills.



This is Part 13 of the Logo Design Round-Up series, ongoing collection of logos and brand marks, self submitted by a bunch of freelance designers, in many creative areas.

Part 14 will follow soon, you can read: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12 if you have missed it.

If you want to be part of this logo design series, then details can be found at the bottom of this post.

What this collection is not

This is not a competition, it’s not a best of, it’s not a who has the best logo, it’s not a collection of logos that I have chosen. They are logos supplied by those that wanted to be part of this post. And a huge thank you to everyone who has submitted.

This series will go on indefinitely, all the time there are designers prepared to submit their logo designs. If you have submitted recently, but your logo is not included in this post, don’t worry, it will be in the next one. I keep each post limited to around 12 logos per post, on a first come first served type of basis.

The logo submissions are displayed in alphabetical order, so no favoritism on my part here. :)

Logo Roundup – Part 13

Sean Corey – 5-squared – Web Designer & Developer – http://5-squared.com

I wanted to make sure that my logo would look good across a variety of mediums at all different sizes. I also really like the idea of having a unique ‘bug’ that could be used on its own and still be recognizable.

After about a million revisions, I finally came up with this. I modified the typeface to make it unique, and I also used 5 squares in the bug, so that it still makes sense when its used on its own. The name of my company comes from my birth date, 5-squared = 25… I was born on 5/25.

Alexis Buatti Ramos – Designer – http://buattiramos.com

For years I would sit down and say “Ok, It’s time to brand myself.” Then next thing I know I was working on someone else’s project, designing another clients logo. I found that if I created a logo I would want to change it the very next day and so on and so forth.

Based on these experiences I knew my logo had to be clean and something that offered variety so I wouldn’t want to change the whole concept everyday. Buatti Ramos is my last name and will always be my last name so I figured thats a given. Next I treaded in the waters of typography. I played with one name being bold, one not but how could I do that when both names are equally important to me. In the end I decided to keep the weights the same and change the color of one. Although “buatti” is a color and “ramos” is white, they present an equal amount of importance and hierarchy, one not truly standing out among the other. I wanted my logo be bold but offer that creative, playful feeling and so I choose a large type size in lowercase.

At this point I had cleared most hurdles that have stopped me in the past when it came to designing my own logo. It was simple enough that I wouldn’t want to change it based on style but just to be sure I came up with a color scheme. On the top right you will see the four colors that rotate into the “buatti” typeface depending on where it is, content etc. So I any given day I can hand out one of my four color schemed logos on my business card.

Patrick Smith – C2 – Brand Development and Design – http://C2-cc.com

A lot of people ask me where the name C2 comes from. Before I founded C2 I had worked for a variety of agencies in Chicago where the name of the company was the owners last name or a combination of names. My last name ranks at the top of the most boring last names on the planet so I decided to take another path.

Ultimately I believe a lot of what we do as creatives is about making connections. We connect our clients business to a creative strategy. We connect those strategies to words and pictures. When we do our job well our ideas connect to people in a meaningful way. The C in C2 is a compressed version of “Connect 2”.

I also like the idea of C having multiple meanings audibly such as see, and sí. The 2 can also have multiple meanings such as two or too. I know that’s reading a lot into two characters but I think it brings some dimension to something that appears very simple.

Philip Thompson – G-R-A Design – Web & Graphic designer – http://G-R-A.co.uk/design

Creative Cultures Scotland is a charity set up to help the creative community of the North East of Scotland. We are currently going through a re-brand and a complete overhaul of our website “service” – as the old site was built before the real take off of web2.0 technologies.

The logo is designed to represent the “spectrum” of practitioners we try to help (from Crafters to Programmers, dancers to writers).

The logo also represents a rural / hilly context of our geographical position, but can also be seen as an abstract, vibrant “urban” graffiti style. A range of abstract colour pallets have also been created to use within the brand, an example of some advertising materials can be found at : http://twitpic.com/e8bwt. Typeface : Nexus

New Website Launching early September creativeculturescotland.co.uk

Isaac Stott – elevenwest – Multi Media Designer – http://elevenwest.co.uk

Our logo came from a love of shapes and colours. The shapes of the word eleven are structured being a circle, a line, a circle, an angle another circle and a curve. We also wanted something that could change colours and be versatile for it’s different uses, though having one feature colour – cyan / blue, the colour that is in every colour.

I’m not a fan of using / recycling fonts, so i built my own letters in illustrator, working with the ideas of many the doodles of the shapes combined, going for a more rigid structure then hand-drawn, but not a thick blocky type, so it’s not so imposing.

I love the old victorian letter W (like two v’s crossed), so this too was worked into the design, which then became the feature inter-changeable colour of the logo.

Lee Gustin – Lee Gustin Creative Designs – http://leegustin.com

When I decided to create a brand for myself, it was not an easy process. Designing anything for yourself as an artist is very difficult. I am (as I’m sure most  designers are as well) my own worst critic. I spent days doing sketch after sketch trying to make something fancy and creative with the L and G in my name.

I attempted to incorporate a mouse pointer into the logo at some point but that did not pan out very well. In the end, I told myself, “You love typography, so stick with a simple type logo.”

I have always loved Helvetica as a typeface, being so clean and beautiful, so I chose Helvetica Neue Condensed Black as the main font. Helvetica Neue Light  is the font for “creative designs,” creating a nice contrast in the thickness of the fonts. I feel the final logo fits my design style as best as I could; simple yet bold.

Miguel Carino – MGC – Senior Interactive Art Director / Interface Designer – http://miguelcarino.com.br

MGC is the online portfolio of the Brazilian Freelancer Senior Art Director / Interface Designer Miguel Carino.

Senior Interactive Art Director / Interface Designer.
Post graduated in web design and graduated in graphic design.Since 2003, working with design and art direction for interactive medias, web and graphic design.
Experienced in concept development, website design, identity design for different industries and agency’s.

Anita Alvarez Cufari – Santa Creata – Online/offline creativity http://santacreata.com

After a lot of years working as a copy freelance, the evolution of the project I was involved pushed me to offer my services under a more corporate name. It was more than just copywriting or international campaign adaptation; it was about design thinking, graphic design, online/offline advertising, creative consulting and more. It was more about a net of cutting edge net of professionals working closely all over the globe.

So, I worked hard figuring out the naming. It had to be easily readable in Spanish and English, but also in any other language. Also, the identity should have been impacting, fun, sort of creative, but serious.

I came up with Santa Creata. It is different, representative and gives some freedom to play with slogans or copys. Also, gives me some space to play as a character online (via Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

So, I contacted “Santa” Sol Matas, one of my partners to work on the logo. She did a wonderful job catching the sparkling spirit of the brand maintaining that professional touch I needed. And one of the things I love about it, it´s people giving a second look to the iso figuring out what it is.

Jay Lohmann – Tag Team Creative – http://TagTeamCreative.com

We designed this logo roughly 13 years ago.  Since that time, it has only undergone one minor revision when we removed it’s original dashed border.

Even though this logo is for our agency, I really believe that the original concept of the partnership of a Designer and Writer (Xacto blade and pencil) teaming up to produce great creative still stands solid, and the design/layout/color scheme have weathered many passing trends.

Wim Bussels – Student Product Design – ­ http://shownd.com/WimBussels

As I am a student Product design at the Media & Design Academy (Belgium) I need a logo to present myself at companies and design agency’s while looking for an internship. This logo is meant to be used on business cards and in my portfolio. And in the very near future hopefully on a self-made website.

After designing lots of different logo’s I was doodling during class and came up with this. I chose not to use an ambigram (although my name is) because this would not be original and innovative, what I try to be during designing.

The logo reflects my style of designing, simple, clean and geometric. I like products that need a second look to be completely understood and tried to capture this in my logo with the optical illusion effect. Because the logo is this simple it is easy to use on products, something I find rather important.  The logo can be used in all sort of colors, but I do like a grey color scheme.

Bogdan Boiangiu – Designer & Photographer – http://bbcversus.carbonmade.com

I am a graphic designer and photographer from Bucharest, and after over 5 years of photography projects, and 2 years of graphic design and desktop publishing, I started my own business as a freelancer and this logo was made for my first client a few weeks ago.

I wanted to make a bold/strong logo, easy to read and suggestive. The first step was to chose the font – went for Helvetica Extra Compressed for readability.

With the choosing of orange and red I wanted to be easily spotted. Provide -> sound – main message being seen first with the words “we” and “the” being read second – . With the face profile wanted to describe the human nature of the artists and of the people behind the project.

I added the glassy look to be like web 2.0, but it looks great in B&W and gray scale as well. Unfortunately doesn’t have the same power when used on dark backgrounds.

End of Part 13 – Submit Your Own Logo

If you want to add your own logo to forthcoming versions of this post, then check out this post ‘I want your creative business logo for forthcoming post’.

If you do submit a logo, then please ensure you submit a few paragraphs about how the logo came into being etc. Without this information I can’t add your logo.

You can see how I designed my own logo in this post : Bastardizing Helvetica for the ImJustCreative Logo Design

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