Category: iPad

When I read other blogs/websites, one of the topics that’s always compelling is a real life “how to” experience, especially those that include the nasty bits of failure and how to adjust. Narcissism is, after all, rather unbecoming… UNLESS it’s so over the top AND on national television that everyone can see what a fool you are. But I digress.

I’ve recently changed the logo for the Impasto website. Did you notice? Deep down I feel this should have been an enjoyable exercise, but I have a short memory and forget how entirely bereft I am of logo design skills, which means I can get to an end result that’s pleasing, but for crying out loud it takes forever. My most recent relapse into logo design insanity was a good learning experience and something I think many of you might find elements of the process to be helpful, either as useful process tips or design excrement to avoid.

My approach to logo selection had a few baseline tenets. It had to be free, art related, and something that was personally meaningful. Ultimately I explored 3 paths:

Image Search: There are various images online that can be used for free, which would be a great option if I could find something that really resonates with my website. I found a few that would work, but then I had to worry about finding out if the image could be used legally, or track down the owner and ask for permission.

Customize Personal Photo: I had been using a cropped portion of an impasto style painting of my own making as my logo. I had grown tired of that image and out of context it was hard to tell what you’re looking at, even if you were an artist. I looked at a lot of my photos to see if there was a fresh look I could use, but nothing struck me. It might be there somewhere in my image library, but I didn’t find it.

Create a Custom Design: After exhausting the first 2 options, it occurred to me that I could create my own logo digitally. Pretty obvious choice given that I’m capable of drawing and painting after all! This is ultimately what I did, and whilst I’m not 100% satisfied with the end result, I feel like the spirit of my current artistic world is captured in the new logo. That said, I can almost guarantee that you’ll see many iterations of the logo over the coming months as I refine the artwork itself.

I created the logo on my iPad Pro using an app called Art Set 4 by LOFOPI. I use the free version (duh!) and am pretty happy with the overall usability. I’ve done a few dozen digital pieces of artwork using this method, but nothing very refined, rather it’s a convenient way to practice sketch or draft new compositions while watching TV – no graphite mess or paint to setup, so its very pragmatic.

The logo is a dog’s tail that has a paintbrush head on the end. I used digital pastels to get a textured look to the tail. I feel the tail structure needs some refinement, perhaps some more pronounced tapering, and the white background is distracting, but overall I’m happy to use it as a working draft.

Once I had the digital artwork done on the app, which took a few tries, I zoomed in the view and took a screen shot. From this point all I had to do was upload the image into the WordPress media library and add it as my logo.

What do you think? Don’t hold back, I’d really like to make changes, and your insights would be helpful, so don’t hesitate to make your suggestions in the comments.

Thanks again for reading!