The original design was a play on the infinity symbol, sort of a "I can do anything" attempt. It also worked with the two "G"s of my name to rotate one into the other and blend them, which had the added bonus of creating a subliminal "L" in the centre. Cool. It's still a good look and I may still keep it but I would definitely take the text out of the center. To that end I've been playing a little with a few alternate ideas.
The image above shows the initial process. Since I'm trying to get more illustration work and all of my illustration work begins with a sketch or two, I thought it might be nice to try to incorporate a pencil into the design. I still like the idea of the reversed "G"s for balance and kept the lower case "L" in the center but the problem with the first concept should be really obvious even to those of you who are not designers. The text is even harder to read than my old design. It might be something I could fix with an outlined font, or perhaps even a totally different font, but add to that the fact that a vertical logo is really hard to use just about anywhere and I had to scrap that idea.
However, I still liked the overall concept of the pencil so I turned the image 90° and dropped the text underneath. I also had to adjust the "GlG" that formed the pencil but now it just looked a little too stubby, and it created way too much negative space at the tip. Obviously this was going to need more work so I extended the length to give it a more pencil-like feel and also extended the height of the eraser and the tip, while shortening up the text below. It's better but it's still not right, especially the unnecessary angles on the two "G"s. Hmm, back to the drawing board.
I decided to scrap the pencil concept for now and focus on the three letters of my name. I still like the reversed "G" for balance but as you can see in the first image the curves in the center don't really work. Once again I've got too much negative space without any reason for it. SO I got rid of the curves and changed the overall color. It's always good to have a black and white version of your brand, but I also needed to look at a few color options and blue seemed like a good choice at this point. No reason at the moment and I'm not going into the psychology of color at this stage yet. Later yes, but for now it's not needed.
The problem with this layout was that the downward curves was making the whole image look kinda sad . . . so I turned that frown upside down and made another attempt at adding the pencil. Better, but it was still missing something. Once I added the pencil tip I changed the color to something closer to a standard pencil. I'm just not sure 123 Yellow is really me, so I decided I'd take a look at more colors and went with the RGB image. It's an improvement cover the yellow, but not by much. On the other hand, in black and white this isn't bad.
It wasn't really good either, at least not as good as it could be. The extension of the upper case "L" was really pulling the weight to the right and it made the entire image a little off-balance. SO I got rid of it. Kept the pencil idea and added back the eraser, and then changed the colors to CMYK. I liked it but it was still missing something so I made the eyes obvious. It now looks like a pair of glasses straddling a pencil, but the tip of the pencil was ruining the simplicity of the overall design so I flipped it. That made all the difference in my never to be humble opinion.
From here on in it's just a matter of deciding on the final color for the new brand and then I'll have to go in and replace it on everything. It should add a nice new feel for 2014 and maybe that'll help to increase sales. Then again, maybe not. The gradient looks a little muddy so I'm likely to avoid that choice and the RGB isn't bad but I think I prefer the lightness of the CMYK version. As a 2 color image the royal purple is nice and may add some change to the overall feel, but it may be safer to stick with colors that are tried and true in the industry to avoid looking too frivolous.
In black and white this design looks fairly clean. It's legible, creative, and somewhat lighthearted. I'm also debating on taking out the "& Design" portion to maintain balance, or perhaps changing the text from "Illustration & Graphic Design" to just "Graphic Design" but since the actual website is www.gordonlgaleillustration.weebly.com that may not be the best choice. If anyone has any opinions or suggestions, feel free to let me know. Obviously this still requires a little tweaking, but for now I'm going to sit back and mull it over . . . maybe with a nice, cold Innis & Gunn.