My Personal Logo

The Rundown:

When I shared my old portfolio (R.I.P. to that icon) with people in my close circle, I got the same reaction from almost everyone - it didn't reflect who I am or my design style. That feedback was crucial for me, and it was what triggered me to develop a personal design challenge to depict myself through a new logo.

The Research:

I spent a week asking friends and family what colors, shapes, materials and other things would best describe me. The takeaways I best aligned with personally were:

• Color: Blue (calm, confident, assured, smooth)

• Shapes: Curves, Congruence (balance, approachability)

• Materials: Metal, Liquid (flexible, edgy)

• Other: Stars (one of my childhood nicknames was Reesestar!)

I used these insights to inform my iterative process and dove into experimenting.

The Response:

Utilizing the research I collected along with my own design instincts, I determined the best way to accurately describe myself through a logo was with star with my name incorporated into it. I created many different versions of this using my full initials:

From these experiments, I knew I needed a more compact and concise, yet equally understandable and impactful logo. I decided to drop my other initials and stick with R to pay respects to my old nickname.

By constantly running iterations through the research I collected, I finally came across today's iteration:

The Results:

After presenting this logo to more friends and family, I received an almost unanimous response of agreement with this iteration of my logo. After getting that endorsement, I began experimenting more with textures and mockups for it, while also assuring readability and making sure anything I put on top of the logo doesn't take away from it and what it represents.

Overall, this was a fun challenge that did help me understanding what I want my personal brand to be, while refining my professional design process.