Sometimes I still shake my head in disbelief that my coming up with something to uses on Twitter, has stuck with me as a personal brand of sorts. But once JPlovesCOTTON started to stick, I embraced it, have even purposefully encouraged it. That takes a new step now.

If you are seeing this in your subscription email, you wouldn’t see the new logo that’s at the top of the website, so let me put it in here now. Oh wait, there are actually two logos — one is being used in the header and the other is waiting for this big reveal. 

I hope you think they fit. They have a bit of energy behind them in my opinion…. positive energy for me and I hope for you too.

Why have a logo?

 

For a while, I’ve wanted to change the look of the blog…. and since JPlovesCOTTON became a brand for me years ago, it seemed I should just go ahead and let that lead. And it seemed like a logo seemed the perfect start. Problem was, I wasn’t sure what I wanted from it.

The Process of Design

Having worked in marketing a long time, I know that can take quite a process. Still, I wanted to get to work on it. Yeah, you can see that I made some bad decisions early on!

I had one go at it with a dear friend who really was happy to help. He did great work but I had trouble really articulating what I wanted. It made the design process arduous. I wanted to love one of the concepts he came up with (as did he) but my lack of direction made it painful for both of us.

A year after I really wanted that to work, I decided to go a totally different route because I saw the logo that my friend Natasha had created for her We Sow We Grow community garden in Chicago. That got me thinking about what I wanted to capture with a logo and with that I asked who had designed hers and got in touch with Mandi Buckner.

Working with Mandi Buckner on a New Logo

Mandi has designed quite a few logos so she had a whole series of questions for me on what types of elements, emotions I wanted to convey, how the design would be used and more. We talked about schedules and timing and of course we discussed fees and what would be provided at the end of the process.

You can see her first take at right. She totally got me and my mind raced with ways to fine tune it. Lucky for me I got these the same week I got my iPad Pro so I could play with ideas as I traveled.

That was when I decided the design could be strong enough to be simplified and I asked her to do two versions for me, still wondering whether I would be able to do it. She worked on some things and we were both thrilled.

Lots More to Do

So the logo is a start. I need to get the blog redesigned some more but it was safe holding onto the logo… something I’ve been doing for months. I’m ready to put it out there. Let you guys see it, tell me what you think.

And I have decided to start it with a new project, but I think I’ll write another post for that story…. for now, I want to find myself some lunch!

I Would Love to Hear Your Reactions!