We recently redesigned the Code Spaces website, and a key part of this was the new Logo:
Any of you that know me will be both shocked and amazed to know that I did the Logo myself, but this is not me being cheap and trying to save a few hundred dollars, I actually couldn’t find somebody who:
a. Was able to run with my vague and often contradictory requirements
b. Was able to give me a quote for less that $1000 dollars (I'm not cheep but come on its only a logo).
c. Was even remotely interested in giving me the time to explain my requirements.Now I spent a good two weeks discussing and and giving feedback to a range of designers, some looking to charge $50 per logo to some looking to charge $1000.
I didn’t get any what i would call good icons during this stage but i found one interesting thing and that is, out of all the companies trying to charge more than $750 not one of them actually listened to my feedback. In fact the only good responses I got from my feedback was one of the guys looking to charge < $100 although ultimately it wasn’t to be.
As my dear old Granddad used to say “if you want a job doing properly, DO IT YOURSELF!”
Designing your own Icon or any other graphics is a daunting task for a software developer, things like creativity don’t come easy to us, but hey I’m sat in front of an iMAC “the graphics designers tool of choice” so I must be able to come up with something, shouldn’t I?
Well I decided that the best option would be to draw with a pencil on paper some prototype designs. I expected to draw hundreds, and that the creative juices from deep within my soul would rise to the surface to produce an icon of beauty that the whole world would marvel at however, I drew 3, yes three.
All three were basically a blob and the word Code Spaces, which is in fact the correct anatomy for a logo but at this point not too impressive.
Plan b, was to find an image to replace the blob and then draw some sketches based on that, so I browsed along to iStockPhoto and searched for vector illustrations with the key word cogs and identified 3 images that i could use to replace my “blobs” and redrew the designs.
This would be my short list of designs, and here it is for your viewing pleasure, (be gentle and click to enlarge)
You may have already noticed that I finally picked the middle logo to actually create.
I was able to purchase the image that inspired my design from iStockPhoto and using Illustrator was able to stick the work Code Spaces next to it, with a gradient and a drop shadow for good measure and what would your know? I have a logo. Not that great, but not to bad.
Best of all I saved hundreds of dollars and it only cost me 15 hours of my time, no only kidding the icon took only 30 mins after conception and the best thing really is that every time I visit the website I see it looking right back at me, and it gives me nice warm “I Did That” feeling.
So if your in this position, Do It Yourself!
