Introducing the Logo

For a few years now, I've been thinking that what this blog needs (yes, yes, I know, cue the loud chorus from 2 of the 3 people in the audience: "You mean, aside from better writing and more content?!") is a logo. A few weeks ago, I finally decided to do something about it.

And, behold: The new bloginhood logo!

Many, many, many enthusiastic thanks to friend, coworker, and graphic artist extraordinaire Nancy Berke for coming up with this cool design.

She put a lot of work into this concept, chatting with me at length to get some sense of what I was looking for (which wasn't easy, because the geekery on the site is pretty diverse, and my approach to working with graphic designers on projects, in general, has always been to give them some broad ideas of what I'm looking for, then let them tap their creativity to come up with something interesting that, let's face it, I, as a non-artist, probably wouldn't have thought of), and reading back through the posts to get a feel for the tone and content. From there, she came up with several different, eye-catching design options, presenting everything from rockets to dragons - and this funny little planet. Any one of those illustrations would have been great, and, to some degree, I wanted to use all of them. She very wisely suggested that focusing on one would be better than mashing a bunch together - and thankfully, I listened.

But as good as they all were, this was the one my eyes kept drifting back to. Right from the start, I was in love with the idea of using the craters to spell the site name, with the straight letters by extension giving the feel of ridges or valleys, or, at the beginning and end, the lines of the horizon. It was simple, spacey, clean, and a bit goofy. It was perfect. It also was Nancy's favourite, and my wife's, and with two other people with different perspectives coming to the same choice, I would have been a fool to turn my back on it.

I also realized, just a couple of days ago (and maybe this thought was lurking unseen in my subconscious the entire time) that another reason I like it is that it's vaguely reminiscent of Chairface Chippendale's partially-completed lunar graffiti on The Tick. Not that I'm planning on taking up a career as a super villain though. Not yet, anyway.

Meantime, I hope you enjoy the logo as much as I do.