It’s an oddity that I have struggled immensely rebranding myself. I still don’t know if I’m successful. I’m attempting to bolster my portfolio site, resume, business card, and physical portfolio with a new image. The current one is my attempt at branding as a senior in college. It was successful, cute, and landed me a job, but it leaves me now with no real identity. I can’t explain to people that “this is me.”

I went through tons of sketches. Made a list of words I wanted to be associated with – “Balanced, professional, polished, established, meaningful.” I tried playing puns on my last name, including my (less-than-lovely) nicknames of “aircraft carrier” and “pigeon carrier.” Puns are supposed to show that the designer is thinking with intelligence, right?

But when I started perusing logos of today, that seemed to be what’s the it thing to do with logos. It’s so clever to have a pun, or a literal translation of the words in the logo. It’s almost as if all the design teachers said, “Here’s how to create a logo. Make it a pun!” Presto! It’s a good logo. So, with the inundation of all “clever” logos, I threw those concepts out.

First computer round of concepts

So I asked – what’s meaningful to me that I want to portray to my clients? That I’m balanced, because I feel I can design both masculine and feminine concepts well (due to my personality being quite a mix), that I take a logo and apply it to an identity, and that I understand symbolism.

What symbols were important to me? Mainly my associations come from Chinese cosmology and philosophy.  Although I wouldn’t label myself a pure Daoist, my life is Daoist inspired by the concepts of balancing yin and yang. So the yin-yang symbol is very important to me. Taiji, which I practice, is also based on the principle of dividing yin and yang. The tiger is important to me, as it is my Chinese horoscope and I completely believe that I have all the traits described by it. The colors red, elemental for fire (which my year is also a fire tiger), and yellow, elemental for earth, are symbols of passion and love. The love I have for this profession.

Thinking of these important elements of my life, I came up with a few more ideas:

Second round of computer logos

When I got to the bottom, I was thinking I hit the mark (pun intended). The symbols could be interpreted in many ways. They could be the yin yang circle to symbolize my balance. They could be fish, which represent prosperity and abundance in Chinese culture. Or even they could be typographer’s single quotes, for the graphic design geek.

I couldn’t decide on a font, though. The one on the left has a lot of character, whereas the one on the right is a bit more modern. The Art Deco quality of the first I think looked too much like old movie studios titles  and might pigeonhole me into that category. Using the right, I began to experiment more on alignment, kerning, and tracking.

Third round of computer logos

I keep looking at these wondering which way to go. I love the way “Carrier” looks bunched together, but I think “Studios” feels better spread out more. It’s definitely a matter of fine-tuning the details until I find something I really like.

Unfortunately, unlike my clients, I can’t have this “AHA! That’s the one moment!” because I’ve been working with all of them. If I just could only see the final product, and know in an instant that it represented me, I would feel better about this logo. But that’s something that designers aren’t granted.

I think when all is said and done, this is what I’m going to go with:

The FINAL