The Evolution Of A Logo

You may have noticed I updated the site logo last week. The background map is from my upcoming fantasy novel Glass. By adding the blood spots, sword, and slogan, I hoped to recreate that sense of adventure, that elusive feeling of awe that comes when you’re transported by a novel into a new world. Did I meet that goal? You be the judge.

Normally, on an author’s site, you expect to read posts about how that author came up with so-and-so story, or posts analyzing this scene or that scene. I’m sure I’ll do posts like that eventually, but I thought I’d do something different today. Something unexpected!

Today I’m going to tell you how I came up with my logo.

The Process

I started with the Photoshop template below, put together by the good folks at Marketing Graphic Toolkit. Basically I just changed the default text, and put in my name and slogan. I decided on “Let’s Create Worlds Together.”

For the next step, I got rid of the unneeded text on the right, and tried putting in my photo. When I uploaded it to the site, I didn’t like the overall look. Seemed a little bland for my tastes. Plus, I already had my picture and profile in the sidebar just below, so having the picture there seemed a little unnecessary.

So I took out the photo, then replaced the background with the world map from my Glass novel. The Photoshop template already had shadow and texture layers, which made the map look great in the logo. I also changed the color of the ‘ink spots’ in the upper right to a dark red. Now I had blood splattering my map. Sweet!

I uploaded that and let it sit on the site for a few days. It was good, but not great. Something was missing. It didn’t really have that “wow” factor I was looking for. I wanted something memorable, exciting. I realized the slogan was part of the problem–it wasn’t really working. So I brainstormed ten new slogans, and finally decided on “The Age Of High Adventure.”

Also, I wasn’t big on the colors and font used in my name, so I decided to replace that part of the logo with a tighter font, and steel colors.

I uploaded that, but still felt something was missing. Then I realized what it was. A sword! A fantasy writer with a name like Isaac Hooke needs a sword through his name! So I hopped on over to istockphoto, picked out and purchased a cool-looking sword, shrunk and re-sized it, and stabbed the damn thing right through my name.

Voilà! We have the official logo of IsaacHooke.com.

Discussion Question

Let me know your thoughts on the imagery, and on the slogan “The Age of High Adventure.” Do you like any of the other logos better?