Renaming to VanH
This week I've been working on branding more! Specifically, considering how I should approach my overall branding and how I show myself on social media.
It's been a tough one, it took a long time for me to be happy with my new logo simply due to how many god damn itterations it took to actually get it to the point inwhich I'm happy with. However, I think a lot of the issues I was conflicted with was mainly what to do with it. And it's hard to convey the kinds of recent conflict I've been having with myself without having paragraph apon paragraph explaining step by step of the breakdown inwhich I got to that point mentally.
The conclusion to that point being with the new logo, I was conflicted with how I should, or if I should reinvent myself as a designer.
Here's a banner I made during the development of my recent logo, you'll probably notice some differences between this and the final itteration, simply because it was exactly that. A banner inwhich is a muddled mess of colours and lack of self control and understanding. I wasn't really entirely sure on what to do with it, if I should use it, if it was good.
The past couple days I've felt mentally broken, and it's all because I wasn't happy with a result like this. It wasn't me, and my idea on reinventing myself as the designer I should be felt broken and shattered. Looking back at it now, I feel like the banner isn't inheritly bad, but the spacing and general focus of the banner is unclear. Putting it simply, it just isn't clear on what it says, it's just plain hard to read and understand what it's trying to display. Not only as a brand, but as a personality.
Overall, it just generally wasn't what I wanted. Even something as simple as the main colours I should use through out my branding I wasn't really sure about. Regardless, I left it for a couple of days and kept coming back to the drawing board.
First of all, I tried to actually focus on the log itself, focusing specifically on colour, and this is my result. The colours are vibrant but not too contrasting. It's really subtle and even the gradient sloping I think ended up coming out brilliantly. It's such a sharp and sudden curve at the halfway mark and transitions upwards to the gray so naturally in a pixelated tessellated-like look thanks to the checker-board like style of the polka dots. The smooth, none linear feel of it I think really added to the shape of the logo. It feels dominating without actually having bright, purposefully bombastic colours or design elements. I really dig it.
As an experiment of effectiveness and to test if it was even possible to add something like this effectively into a muddle of wide and vastly different colours, I readjusted my current banner with new assets and drawings, cleaned up a few design elements and got rid of a few old pieces.
After all of this I'm feeling better of myself as a "designer", and after my latest synopsis on myself as an artist, even moreso now that I feel like I'm actually achiving a bitmore with myself as an artist. I'm happy with myself for the first time in a while.
Apologies once again for the long post. I feel like the best way I can prove my mental process is to explain myself a lot, and Tumblr / blogging about my designs is probably the best way I can go about it effectively, and hopefully anyone who actually bothers to read it gets enjoyment out of the extra depth I'm passionate about.
