Project IP: Branding Your Site.
Branding your site is an extremely important part of the development process. Your logo will set the tone for who and what you are. It will be the first thing your viewers see, and it will definetly give them their first impression of the information that you are presenting to them.
So what does this mean to you? It means that you need to create a logo that will impress the audience that you are attracting. You will need to identify how your logo is going to be used and what you want to portray with it. The logo for theiphouse is not going to be used for marketing purposes, so I don’t intend to make the most memorable logo that you would see. The logo is going to be used as an agent for welcoming people to my site since I have determined that the major sources of traffic to the site are going to be from search engines, and referring sites, not from advertising. I am giving away information and a simple tool, I am not going to be selling anything so advertising with the logo isn’t really necessary.
With the idea of how I was going to generate my readers, and the knowledge of what I wanted the logo to do I set out to create a logo that was bright and welcoming. I want people to see my logo and think that it was professionally done and that the information on the site was valid and interesting.
So I started with my original logo for the site and started modifying and adjusting what I felt needed to be changed. The logo was already solid, but it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. It depicted a house with my name on it as seen below.
I felt that this logo was a good starting point, but i want to liven it up a bit and get my full name into the picture so I changed the font to a more friendly rounded type, added a gradient to my house to soften it up, and added the word the into the picture incase people did remember it, I didn’t want the going to iphouse.com and not theiphouse.com.
Finally I started of thinking of ways to make the logo depict the content of the site a bit more. Yes, the house was good for the name, but this wasn’t a site about building homes, or your home address it is about a technology based topic. I decided to use the quite familiar symbol of the feed icon to show that the house was high tech.
So the final logo came out pretty easily. I didn’t spend any money on designing this logo so my budget is still fully intact, and the logo is simple and welcoming just as I hoped it would be. You can generate the theories behind your logo and develop it cheaply as well. If you need any help leave a comment and we can start brainstorming for the application purpose of your logo.
Don’t forget to sign up for my rss feed to keep track of this projects status. Plus it would be a help to me in achieving my goal of 100 subscribers by June. I look forward to seeing if you have any logo designs worked up, or helping you in creating your site.
The Good Word