We Got a Logo

Blog No. 83

If you happened to miss my blog last week, it was graced with a special guest post by my friend and fellow Adventure Worlds writer, Justin Cantelo.  He had the difficult challenge of blending his style of writing (and bloging) with my meanderings.  I can’t say I would have ever written a post on the topic he picked, but it works for his writing and it was a fun read.  (It was a bit odd reading my own blog and seeing something I hadn’t cobble together.  I am going to have to address his thoughts in an upcoming post of my own, but I’m going to let it sit for now.  If you haven’t read it, you should go check it out – but not until after you read this one.

I have decided that a vacation may be a bad thing.  I’m sitting here on Thursday morning with half a blog, and I’m struggling to get it finished.  I’m not going to blame Justin, but I wouldn’t have had that taste of freedom if he hadn’t thought of writing that guest post.  Really I am just lazy and having gotten the chance to not do something, I want more of that.  I have had a reasonably productive week though, and a big par of that is that we (as in Adventure Worlds) now have a logo.

I had bugged the group for a logo since the beginning and after months of bothering someone with design experience (and an actual career to put off in order to do our stupid logo) we finally got it done.  Even though no one in the group actually created the thing there was a ton of work involved.  I spent all of 2013 doodling ideas, then bringing those ideas to the group and having them shot down.  It was a little disheartening, but I sucked it up and what we ended up with was probably better for the criticism.  As it turned out, eventually we got to a place where having a logo was more important than finding things wrong with the terrible rough sketches I made up and with Christian’s artistic help, we used one of the turned down doodles and made it something the rest of the group let slide.  With a handful of extrapolated designs from Christian, we brought the logo to the professional with a career and we got our logo done.

You may be completely bored with this story (and topic) but having a logo is a turning point for us.  If nothing else, now I don’t have any excuses for my procrastination.  We have a lot of grand vision for Adventure Worlds and a lot of the work has been put off with the justification that without a real logo, it wouldn’t make sense to put a bunch of effort into any of those ideas.  With the logo done though, I have the zine to layout, my website to finish and flyers to print.  We also have to look at products to slap the logo onto and see if we can find a market for them.  It’s a fair bit of work and a lot of that stuff ends up in my lap since I am the member of the group with the smallest list of responsibilities.  I don’t mind the work (like editing, I kind of enjoy it) but it is work, and I don’t like that part of it.  It’s like I have been able to have a vacation without having the logo (which I have already addressed, is a bad thing) but now it’s time to get back to work.

I have the majority of the first zine finished, but even though we have the fantastic logo, we need pictures.  Christian is creating a cool old-school pulp style cover (which matches the undertones of the blog) but we need headers for the stories and at least one or two images for the middle of the longer stories.  It seems that both work and procrastination breed more of itself.  The most important part is that we have stories for it (and that I spent a whole night laying it out so that when we get it printed the page numbers will like up properly).  Like I said, it was a bit of work, but I really didn’t mind it in the end, and it wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t get that logo done.

The logo is more than just a symbol.  It’s even more than just a marketing tactic.  It’s a sign that we are actually a thing – a group that can be recognized.  Maybe it’s just a personal, internal thing, but to me, having a logo means we aren’t just a group of friends occasionally writing stories for each other to read.  The group is committing to something more, and the logo (and the work put into the logo) shows that to others.  It’s a linchpin that allows the group to move forward in a few different directions (but all of them forward) without it falling apart.  Sure, it is a bit of a marketing gimmick, but sometimes those marketers know what they’re talking about – and to me the logo is more.