Logo design is one of my great loves. As someone with an obsessive passion for details, logos have caught my eye for as long as I can remember. As one of my favorite graphic designers Michael Bierut said, a logo is an empty vessel into which a brand identity is poured.
Thinking about a logo in this way, as an empty glass, teaches us more about what it means to be a brand than it does what a logo needs to be, but that’s because logos need to do very specific things and brands don’t necessarily have to. There’s a million ways to brand yourself or your company, and once you have a brand established, whether personal or commercial, all you need is a graphically artistic way of imaging that.
If you want people to believe your products, such as your trucks for example, are tough, before they even drive them, a delicate font and a minimal logo are not what’s needed. Just look at the front of new Ford trucks or the backs of RAM trucks. Huge, bold, thick, all-caps lettering scream strength and toughness. Of course, the imagery of a ram and its horns gets the power and toughness across too. And that’s the point.
A logo needs to make physical what a brand itself makes metaphysical.
So for me, the detail-oriented design fanatic who loves to take everything apart, what does a logo have to do? Well, like I said I love taking things apart and putting them back together again, so I need a logo that isn’t one piece, but also isn’t separate pieces. I prefer minimalism, so my logo can’t be too complicated. It needs to be seen in various sizes: large on this page or small on my business card. And it needs to be undoubtedly tied to me. These are things about me which are not physical. They are parts of my personality, not my person. So now that I have what I know I want my personal brand to suggest about me, I have to translate that into design language.
I start with the source material: my initials. JKB. I noticed many years ago that each letter has a stem. The J has a large spine on the right of it, and the K and B on their left sides. I prefer, through making literally hundreds of variations over the years, leaving out the K. Two letters are easier to work with compared to three, and JB are famous initials (James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jim Beam, Joey Bada$$, Joe Biden, Jeff Bridges, etc.) My initials are very round on their ends, with the curl of the left of the J and the bumps on the right of the B. So I could make one stem and put a J on the left, and a B on the right of it!
To imply that I like to take things apart, I chose to show what parts of J and B are common graphically and show them detached from the rest of the logo. So the Curl of the J and each bump on the B is separated, but aligned with the central stem in such a way they seem like one curvy and edgy object. They all also lock in at certain points like how puzzle pieces would, but also seem like they could be rearranged. The straight edge of the J curl against the straight edge of the stem, the bottom of the lower B bump bending inward to spoon with the stem, and the top bump perched against the stem and bottom bump give it this cohesive look. Plus it’s big and bold and highly scalable. I like it.
It took about 5 years of near-constant doodling for me to get to this, and I ended up really wanting to feel this design last year. So, I took out a coping saw and a thin slat of wood, sketched out the logo so that each piece was about the size of my palm, and then cut away. I sanded each piece and found I could make a few shapes out of my own initials. I felt, for the first time, a logo that I made. I felt the physical form of an illustrated design which reflected my personal, intangible brand. It was surreal, and it’s part of the reason I recommend everyone have a personal logo.
These are the things I love to make most. Company logos are great, but making logos for people is incredibly fun, and reveals a lot about the person. I’ll share more.
J
Thou Art 