Redesign Series >> My Logo ( Grd 3000)

My logo was the first project I did as in a design class. I worked very hard on it and I am still open to renovations to it.

These were my first round of final designs. I had a million more sketches but I settled on these to develop digitally and pursue. I wanted my logo to communicate something uplifting because of my passion for improvement. 

Those on the left were derived from my own handwriting. I quickly wrote the letters trying to capture my natural handwriting. Then i took that and refined it to come up with these variations. The idea was to capture myself in my logo organically. I stacked the A on the K for uplifting and the exchange of stacking for support and uplifting through collaboration.

Those on the right were my more clean, stable variation that i designed through playing with the forms of K and A. I loved this combination because it made the K and the A similar in form and when united they make an M which is cool since my full name is Kwame Amuleru-Marshall. I was stuck on having wings in my logo since the year before when I saw my friend Mario designing his logo for Intro. So designed some that used elements from my type design.

These were what I initially turned in for critique. I went crazy with extra graphic elements. I shed the wings since they made it look like an air force logo badge. I tried to turn it into an upward pointing arrow using shapes that had duality like the two letters. The top shape was designed after a crown and the lower was designed after a smiley face with the letters being the eyes sort of like one of the exaggerated expressions in anime which I am a big fan of. I wanted them to show positivity. I chose the darker blue because it is a royal color and and the lighter blue to communicate the sky. The fact that my favorite color is blue had nothing to do with it! I also like how the lighter color seems like a kind of water mark version of the darker blue. Like a hazy back drop since the A is behind the K.

This is the redesign. Much more simple and to the point with a small up arrow "pointing to the skys".

This is the most recent design. I knocked out the stem on the arrow to make it very flush and corporate. I brought in the space between the two strokes of the K and widened the space between the K and A to help show that it is two letters, rather than one giant fancy M. One thing I love about this logo is that it can be read even when made to be very small. It has a cool modern type feel to it that I made myself but even so, it is mostly rounded and intimidating. It's triangular shape is simple and memorable and it shows stability. It still points to the sky, just much more subtle. The colors are cool and relaxed my I am most of the time but still represent royalty and the sky. 

-Kwame Amuleru