I've always been skeptical of personal branding projects. To me it was something that design students did to put on their resume to make up for the lack of experience or work in their portfolio ( I know I sure as hell went through about 3 different personal "logos" throughout college, a.k.a various stacked bold typefaces of my name). Or it was for professionals who took themselves too seriously. I always told myself that after college I'd never do it, and for almost 5 years I never did. However, as I started to re-do my personal website this month - I had a change of heart. Here's what changed my mind...
1. Website. As I was re-doing my website I did feel that without one, the minimal layout of the site was looking a little unrefined.
2. Freelance. I've been doing a few freelance projects recently and felt that a logo that I can put on documents such as quotes and invoices makes it feel a little more professional (now just to upgrade from using my @gmail address)
3. Practice! I'd be the first to admit that my graphic design skills could use some refining (I used to try to use Photoshop for literally EVERYTHING, wtf is vector?). After working with some of the unbelievably talented graphic designers at IA Collaborative I got a real view of where my GD skills stood. After deciding I was going back to Koss and knowing I was going to be working on a more broad scope of work beyond just ID, I knew I wanted to refine my graphic skills. So as I was sharpening those skills, a personal branding was a perfect practice project (full circle to student reference above).
Thats really what changed my mind, I'm still trying to not be the professional who takes themselves too seriously. I guess I just enjoy design too much to not put a spin on my own branding.
What I ended up with was just a simple "KM" monogram. What I enjoyed about the final direction was that the K and M are actually the same shape just rotated 90 degrees. I love the minimal and "part optimization" aspect of the design, which I think really reflects and my ID style/philosophy.
Enjoy some of the terrible concepts below that were created along the way! Although I did land on the final direction pretty quick.
