Logo Love

The first step towards having my own business is making an Identity. This is a lot harder than it sounds, because I'm not just going to be 'Ashley Patterson: Graphic Designer', I'm going to be my own company. And a company needs a name, it needs its own identity.  The name has to reflect the business, and it has to be something that will represent my business for years to come. 

I've chosen 'Original Ashley Design'. The reason for this is as follows: In my research of design companies, large and small, they are either named after the founder (or sole employee), like Chris Lumsdon Design, or Scott Thornley & Company, or they have an interesting more abstract name like Dragonfly Design or Slingshot. I decided to steer clear of the more abstract names and to use my own name instead. Besides, I've been using the tag 'The Original Ashley' for years now, and I felt it was fitting. 

So we have a name! Huzza! Now I know the name of my company, I need an Identity to go with it. For those less graphic designer'y inclined, the identity includes everything from a logo, to a font, to colour scheme. Basically the whole look, the business card has to match your website, which has to match your brochures.  It's one of the more daunting tasks to do for yourself. I've started the process by working on a Logo. Now, I personally struggle with Logos. They are EXTREMELY hard to come up with and I have worked very hard to be improve at this very important skill. I find it really helpful to actually start on paper first. It's so hard to come up with something original when you're on the computer and just playing with different fonts. So I pulled out the paper, sharpened my pencil, and got to scribbling. 

This is the result.

Doesn't seem like much, does it? But this is actually really great for me, each idea is an evolution of another. And these are only the very rough, base ideas. There are actually a few there that I plan to work with, and I'll be posting those when I've rendered them in illustrator. Right now I'm just thinking black and white, I can always add colour later once I've decided what colours I'd like to use. But I think there are about five I'll be playing with and I was hoping on having a poll later on to see which is everyone's favourite! Thats right, I figured out how to have a poll feature!!! I should have the logo hopefuls within a couple days, so stay tuned!