A Bit About My Logo Design Passion

A quarter century ago (1984) Los Angeles hosted the XXIII Olympic Games. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the Games logo. I was amazed on how powerful a logo could be - while the visual form was simple, the impact was unbelievable.

My memory tells me that was when my passion for logo design started. I was 16 and a university freshman majoring civil and architectural engineering.

Later that year, I entered and won the competition of the logo design for the 13th Annual Games of my department. Since then I went crazy in learning and participating in logo design.

Years later, after winning a citywide competition in Xiamen, China, among hundreds of entries including those by professional designers, I became more confident and even thought that logo design could be my back-up profession if I lost interest in my career as an architect or civil engineer - in fact I did both, for 10 years before switching to the pursuit of web/graphic design happiness, not long before the dot-com boom went burst.

In the past 10 years, while designing web sites and creating graphics, I've got plenty of opportunities of designing logos for various clients and friends.

I regret I didn't keep good track of what I did in the past, but my memory serves me pretty well in the very details of how I went through each of them from conception to completion. So, here is the story of the making of my personal logo, which is one of my favorite and one that pretty much sums up my design philosophy.

The Task / Design Brief

In 1999, I attended Bodwell Internet College in Vancouver, Canada, getting intensive training in advanced Internet development and graphic design. Creating a personal logo was one of the design assignments. To me, a task like this was always a lot more exciting than learning HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP.

Here came the task and challenge: design a logo that identifies yourself, reflects your personality, and/or occupation, background, hobbies etc; a logo that is unique, simple, concise, impressive and memorable; a logo that truly belongs to you and that nobody else could claim theirs.

Research / Brainstorming

To start the project, like with every other logos, the first step was to do some research and brainstorming. I spent quite some time brainstorming and wrote down a list of possible things that came to my mind during this process:

1. A head shot, or an illustration of myself
2. My full Chinese Name, Ge-Nong Zheng
3. A dove, symbolizing peace, freedom (of creative thinking)
   Note: my first name Ge-Nong can be directly translated into English as dove-breeder; Chinese way of naming convention tends to give symbolic meaning or good wish to a name, a way pretty much like a logo design, except only playing with characters
4. My english name is Sunny, thus sun, sunshine or something positive, outreaching, passionate may be appropriate
5. The initials of my name - S Z
6. A hand/palm, a symbol widely used to signify creativity
7. An eye, a symbol widely used for visual art related subject
8. Artist's palette, for my love of painting and art
9. Paint brushes, same as above
10. A heart, for passion
11. Guitar, for my love of playing classic guitar
12. Maple leaf, for Canadian
13. A globe, for world wide web (not so much a cliche in year 2000 as it is now)
14. An @ sign, same as above
15. A computer mouse, same as above

That was 15 elements/ideas already, I felt these were enough to work with. Did I miss anything important? Unlikely. OK, Let's move on to next stage.

Sketching / Idea Development

I simply turned all ideas into quick sketches - in fact, in the brainstorming stage I often use sketches already - with one or more versions for each. These can be outlined or filled version. This is important for further idea development.

Alert - Don't be overwhelmed by too many sketches and don't know where to go next!

When my brain was working more than active and over excited, I ran into this situation. This could be a good thing or a disaster if you didn't know how to take control. I felt it was time to calm down, reassess the ideas, eliminate some that were less relevant, cliche or not unique, and keep only the most important one(s), for further development. I killed most of the initial ideas and kept a simplified list.

1. A dove, not just for my name, but also good symbolic meaning
2. Sunshine - has to do with my name and a bright personality
3. A hand/palm, for creativity
4. An eye, for visual art
5. A maple leaf, for Canadian
6. A globe, for world wide web

By now I still had 6 elements. How could I integrate them into one logo? Well, what is a false statement in math can be quite true in logo design, i.e. 1 + 1 + 1 + ... + 1 = 1, and I often enjoyed playing with this trick and got unexpected and satisfied outcome.

Don't get me wrong, I do understand that many great logos have only one major element in them and that's all they need; I also have seen many designers trying too hard to let their logo carry too much; but sometimes by integrating a few shapes/elements/ideas into one, the logo becomes a clever and playful one, therefore more memorable.

There is no secret, just keep sketching, with focus on combining shapes and simplifying them, until the new shape is simple enough, unique enough and beautiful enough. Don't be afraid to revisit some old ideas, or kill more in the already simplified list.

Here is one of my sketch sheets. I remember clearly when I got the one with the hand/eye/dove combination, I knew I was almost there. I gave up the idea of making the maple leaf shape into the logo.

Revision / Refinement

I used Adobe Illustrator to draw this hand/eye/dove idea. Below you will see some refinements and how a tiny change may enhance the overall visual impact - the addition of a globe in the place of the eyeball and the openness of the lower part.

Finishing Touch / Completion

Are we there yet? Yes, but still there is always a final touch that makes a logo not just excellent, but perfect. By replacing the lower part with a brush stroke, the logo immediately gained more dynamic and was brought to life.

Oh, and the very last thing - colors! Like many great logos, my logo was designed in black and white first, then depending on the usage, different color combinations may be applied.

Below are some variations of the logo, with different color usages. Mr.SunnyZ was added recently when designing this web site. The third version has a maple leaf texture.

Upon completion of this design, I can proudly declare: this is MY logo. It is simple, concise, unique, original and memorable, yet it is sophisticated, meaningful and playful.

Comments / Feedback

I appreciate your patience reading this long story (please forgive my writing skill). I would REALLY love to know your thoughts.

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MrSunnyZ, or Sunny Zheng, is a Canadian professional web designer and graphic artist, with 10 years experience in web design and 25 years in creative problem solving and art making. Sunny is currently seeking freelance work, until he finds a full time position that can fully utilize his skills, experience and creativity, and appreciate his versatility, productivity and work ethic.

Having a background in both architectural and structural design, trained in advanced internet development, Sunny has a fully balanced left brain and right brain (with an IQ of around 150, not bad eh?) He enjoys designing web sites and creating all sorts of materials for sales and marketing teams. He also enjoys hand-coding all the web pages he makes including the one you are visiting (with valid XHTML and CSS).

So all he really wants to say is, Hire MrSunnyZ and You Won't Regret.

Latest News

05/16/2010 - My site is added to CoolHomepages.com as "an example of remarkable web site design" as they say. CoolHomepages.com is the oldest and largest "Best Web Site Designs" gallery online.

03/31/2010 - My "Cancer Therapies Foundation" logo is one of only six shortlisted for Identity: Best of the Best 2010 International Contest, in Category L7 - Logo (non-commerce organization). Other shortlisted designers/agencies in the same category include Lippincott and Jeff Fisher LogoMotives.

11/15/2009 - The logo "7" is featured on Logo Gala. This is the 2nd time the site featureds my logo.

10/13/2009 - The "Cancer Therapies Foundation" logo is featured on 20 Best Inspiring Logos on Powerusers blog.

10/04/2009 - My "Cancer Therapies Foundation" logo is chosen as winner of Logo Of The Day Award.

08/25/2009 - My logo "7" is chosen as winner of Logo Of The Day Award.

08/24/2009 - My logo "Corporate Edge" gets featured on LogoGala.com, a logo gallery for inspiration.

07/24/2009 - MrSunnyZ.com gets featured on "70 Inspirational Single Page Website Designs" on InstantShift, daily resource for web designers and developers.

06/11/2009 - MrSunnyZ.com gets featured on Creative Opera, a blog for designers to find advice and inspiration. The post "Showcase: One-page Websites with a Smooth Scroll" features a number of creative one-page websites.

Click here to download Sunny's Resume in Word format or PDF format.