A new logo

I have found through my college education that my most dominant strength in technical and professional communication is content development and editing. Through my five-plus years as a Michigan Tech undergraduate student, I've forayed into graphic design, document design, content design, content creation, graphic creation and production management. I keep coming back to that home base.

Content creation is a special process for me. I'll have an idea, a spark will light in my brain, and the essay or paper or report will come to life before my mind's eye. The words dance before me as I weave their lyrics together across the page.

I spend so much real estate talking about this because it defines my professional goals. I've developed this love of communication into a vocation, working with a company in the Telecommunications and Internet application solutions industries writing copy and managing documentation. I've also started expanding into the Web, using my personal Web site to experiment on ways to advertise myself and my specialties. Polyseme.net, which I've operated since July 2007, is a constant work in progress as I learn new design techniques and refine my skills.

A constant crutch of mine is visual design. I find designing meaningful graphics most difficult, where I have to pack the same wealth and quality of information and message I normally have in a three or four page essay into a single image. So I've taken this opportunity to update my Web site's logo.

I have a concept which inspires me in my work. I rally myself behind the archetypes built into the word "Forward." "Move forward," "Think forward," "Look forward." All of these slogans identify my ever-present desire to improve the quality of communication my clients are identified with and to continue teaching myself. Forward means movement, means progress and is a healthy balance of review and analysis.

Move ahead while acting now and understanding the past.

I also identify my work with that organic, chaotic spark of creation that inspires the work I do. Whether writing or designing, I act in large spurts of energy, leapfrogging from step to step. This combines with my equal parts relaxed and intense personality makes for an exciting and rewarding experience, at least for me.

I took these three elements, "forward," the spark and my personality, and tried to combine them in a logo design.

Above is the progress I took to get to the design I settled on.

The final version is effective in both reference gray and white text depending on the surrounding environment. As with the focus of my skills I started simply with text and experimented with ways I could embody my key elements. Adding the tag "Forward." was a blunt choice, and pushing the "P" in Polyseme into the "o" next to it was meant to create part of the tension which exists in that creative region of communication creation.

I next wanted to try it reversed to add another layer of visual tension. Thanks to the principals of spacial recognition, cutting out the letters of the logo from its surrounding block provides a unique view of the logo, as it takes on the color or pattern of whatever is behind it. The design concept is also rather new to digital, as it's only recently that IE and Firefox truly support transparent PNG files and designers can really take advantage of the technique. In the end, the design lacked flexibility and portability between site designs so I moved back to a positive value text logo.

The jump in design happened in the same way I write -- a spark hit and I made a large set of changes. The final design holds the three elements I wanted to convey in a way I haven't been able to communicate before.

First, I dropped the slogan "Forward." and replaced it with the symbolic representation of the movement the term conveys. The upward-slanting cross-strokes on the letter "e", paired with the underline which runs into the starburst, both indicate movement. The inclusion of the ".net" into the tail of the final "e" further supports this movement and draws strength to the design.

Secondly, I took the archetype for an idea, the light bulb, and distilled it to it's very basic form, the starburst. The starburst catches in itself the idea of the creative spark and adds visual appeal to the otherwise text-based logo.

Third, the choice of yellow-orange, along with the slightly-odd font face (uneven stroke feet, very symmetrical "o" and "e", etc.) highlights the quirk and chaos that is my professional practice and personality.

And finally, part of my communication philosophy dictates that, in all things, I strive to be as clear and concise as the situation allows. In this I have striven to keep the logo spartan and convey it's message in the simplest way possible.

You can see an implementation of the logo here, as I have not yet replaced my old logo present on this version of my site.

I am happy with where this design has arrived. I think I can make it better however, and in particular feel that I could add strength to its visual recognition. I am not sure if I've trimmed too much information from the logo or if I am accurate in the delivery of my intended message through its design.