Logo Design Evaluation

Creating My Logos


At the start I thought the best way to find ideas would be to find images that I can replicate in my own way and could potentially become a nice good looking logo but doing this had caused me many issues.
It caused me to waste a lot of time leading to repercussions that ended up effected me creating logos because I felt rushed the whole time and I tried using many images mostly being scrapped early on because I knew I had limited time and didn't even bother keeping them on Photoshop so I didn't even have anything to show for all the wasted time.
It had also left me with little actual designs and the ones I did create were mostly rushed.

One of the examples of wasted time was when I thought about doing a design based off a Tiger tank as I did think the logo had to represent something about me and what I like and being a fan of history and strategy games led me to attempt to outline an image however it was just one of the many designs/attempts that were harpooned but for this led me to start looking at different parts of history that I'm a fan of and could contain a good image to be the main inspiration for the final logo.

But before I carried on due to having no logos I decided to quickly create some designs based off my initials so I could at least show something for the wasted time. They were created by just simple shapes arranged to make the letters and one using effects such as bevel & emboss, colour overlay and gradient overlay. This was done to give it a somewhat metal feel to it and I was also hoping it could help think of more potential ideas but it didn't help but give me some designs really.

Now that I had some designs done I thought I should have some practice in using the graphic tablets so I could use them effectively for future designs so I looked at my game collection and got the idea to outline the main character from the latest Call of Juarez game which just involved creating a simple outline and then I added some colour just to see what it would like and I was somewhat impressed by how well I felt I created it but I stopped working on it so I could start on other ideas for my logo designs.

I then proceed to look back at events and parts of history which could generate good looking images for my logos to be based off and I decided to start by looking back at the game Victoria 2 which is a grand strategy game based around 1836-1936 period and one of my favourite things to do on the game was to create the German Empire and this was achieved with Prussia by uniting small German states while fighting off countries like France and Russia so I started looking at different designs of the Prussian flag and coats of arms etc. and chose to create a logo based of a Prussian Eagle but as I was unsure of how I thought it was going to come out like and to make it easier with drawing with the graphic tablet I created it on a separate Photoshop document and I had trouble with thinking of how I wanted to portray I tried out by having the Eagle holding my initials which I felt was done poorly be me as it didn't look right to me and my colouring of it was terrible so with time running out I decided to skip finishing it which I regret as with more work I think I could of made it look great.

The next design I started to look at was different shields and crests in the hope of creating a simple design based of all sorts of shields and heraldic designs because the idea of having an image used to represent people (originally) in combat e.g. knights in full armor so they were distinguishable and people knew who they were fighting and who was on their side.

However the image I ended up choosing was a simple shield which was a more crusader styled one with a cross on it and this  ended up becoming my final design even though admittedly I fell I could have done so much better but with time looming to get a final image this is what I ended up with, the side images are the image used and the first design created with it.  

The Final design was pretty much the same except I had made it smaller, used a different colour for the cross and finished up better using tools such as the eraser and blur tool and it was created by using the shield design and stamping it repeatedly with a crown purple colour to create the basic purple shield, to get the colour for the cross I felt the quickest way would be to just have a shape of the colour and put it behind the shield design. 

I did have some other logo designs I had quickly done after to see if any other quick logos that looked good can be made but they fell short in help generate more potential ideas and were creating using the same techniques as the final design.