It's a logo!

My niece Holly Ingalls needed a logo for her professional blog. So I created one and it's a cute one I might add! Normally I have all kinds of jpegs snaps along the way of how I develop stuff, but my computer crashed this weekend and this and the coloring page were the things I'd not backed up (thank goodness they were the ONLY things). So I will unveil it and make a few points about what to look for in a logo. Though this one is a little bit involved, I think it's successful and will explain why below:

What makes a good logo? It has to read big as well as small. The image must hold up whether blown way up, billboard size or way down to letterhead size. It must have some kind of stickiness to it, something that's memorable. It could be the GRAPHIC nature like wave and colors of Coke or the swoosh of Nike or it could be an image that evokes a feeling whether nostalgic or some other "value", like Orville Redenbacker, Colonel Sanders or Wendy's. They have changed over the years, and now that they are more corporate owned, they're getting away from the image, but I would argue most people still remember those images and those connections and one of the reasons they feel the loyalty to the brand.

If you can relate the image to what you're selling that's wonderful, but not always necessary. Think Virgin. It's all over the place as to product, so the name is what's important, not what's being sold. It really depends on what you're gracing the marketplace with.

Holly had a specific thing in mind, and I like the colors of this (the colors of her blog, her idea) and the fresh feeling to it. She can use the lettering by itself, or the image alone and it would still hold (though I would suggest if she uses the text alone, she leave the thought bubbles) and I think it reads well together. It was very easy to do this, because she had a specific idea of what she wanted, so it was a pure joy, except for that whole computer crash thingie, to work with.

As to how I did this after losing it? I'd sent her the image before the crash so was able to recover it, though it was at such a low dpi. I show it in the smaller version so you can be the judge of whether it holds it's integrity and interest...