[WEBSITE] The Evolution of the Logo

I can’t quite remember why I wanted a logo for myself. I think it may have been influenced by numerous YouTubers who all ended up having logos for their channels and I wanted one for mine. I, of course, wanted to use it all across everything else I do, such as on my website.

It took a really long time, but I FINALLY got my logo design! You probably have seen it by now. It’s:

While I’m jumping for joy at this beauty, I’m sure many people who know me are thinking “what is with this generic logo design and why didn’t you go with some more creative?”

WELL, LET ME ANSWER THAT, PERSON.

BUT FIRST…I must tell you about the journey of getting to this logo. I wish I had the doodles to show you the concept of it.

We must first start back in 2010ish, when I was watching YouTube pretty frequently. I loved the community on there and just the idea of really feeling together was so grand. I was super inspired by all these people making wonderful content that I decided to start posting on my YouTube channel.

One of the first things I did was create a logo. I know it probably seems weird to create a logo when I’m not a majour YouTuber or anything, but I just wanted to…I guess kind of present myself sort of like one? I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted a logo because they are cool.

Unsure what to do, I decided to go with my “favourite” shape, a star, and my favourite colours of black & green. I opened up Adobe Illustrator and very quickly made the logo. It was actually too plain for my taste initially, so I ended up putting a rather edgy outline to it:

This logo, for myself, is honestly too edgy for me and just shouts “SKATER BOY”. It’s not really a bad logo, per se…it’s just not me. Yes, even with my favourite colours and my favourite shape, it isn’t me. It just didn’t settle with me right.

You can still see it being used in my YouTube Channel avatar, looking far too edgy and not-geeky to be on my channel.

So, I used this one for quite a while, despite that it just didn’t feel right.

Last year, I attempted to fix that! I made another logo, which turned out to be:

It wasn’t quite what I had in mind (which was three coloured stars, getting smaller as they go forward). I actually tried going with what I had in mind and it failed on me, which is why I went with this. It kind of makes me laugh because it looks like a flower.

Similar to the first one, it has bunch of my favourite colours in it and my favourite shape and has been used on my YouTube videos…but it didn’t sit with me right.

It’s not what I wanted.

In ways, it is too childish. It didn’t suit me, despite what it contains. It fails to reflect my website as well.

It is honestly not the kind of logo I would want all over my merchandise.

So, it was back to the piece of paper for me!

I pretty much sat on the idea of wanting a much better logo, something that was clean, reflected me, and reflected my website. I knew I wanted the green/purple/pink colour combination. I also knew…I wanted to get rid of the stars.

Yes, yes. I wanted to get rid of the stars! Quite honestly, that “favourite” shape of mine is sooooo boring now, especially because so many people also like ’em. I still do love stars, but not as much as I used to. I used to want them everywhere, now I’m like “naaaaah, don’t want”.

Not to mention, I felt like trying to keep with the stars was holding me back.

Anyway, while letting the above logo sit in the background, I started to think about how I wanted my business cards to look. I expressed to Hurricane360 that I was having trouble and he gave me quite a lovely suggestion: put myself (girl side & guys side) and Kelly, my Pokémon fan character, on it.

It was actually entirely thanks to this suggestion that helped bring me into the direction of the logo I wanted.

I was trying to figure out how to layout the images of my girl side/guy side/Kelly for my business cards, despite I didn’t draw anything for it yet. When I was thinking up how I could lay it out in a good enough pattern, I thought of boxes. Squares.

Three squares, put together like stairs.

That’s when I started getting it! That’s what I wanted!

I think I thought about my logo having pictures of myself & Kelly or silhouettes of us, but that didn’t feel quite right either. I was close. Maybe that would be nice for the business card, but for the logo…there had to be something better.

And that’s when I had a visualization — three squares, linked together. They would be outlined in black, the inside will be white, and they would have thin lines of pink/purple/green going through each one.

It. was. PERFECT.

I doodled it. I kept it in my head. I put it off, partially afraid of failing and partially because I was too lazy.

Then, yesterday, I did it. I FINALLY made the logo that I saw in my head. And guess what? It looks exactly how I saw it in my head.

…okay, I’ll admit, I saw it flipped in my head. It occurred to me to flip it again when I was putting together the website’s “Welcome” graphic.

IT’S SO PERFECT TO ME. SO PERFECT.

The squares are linked together, but appear to be both separate and together. It’s like they have threaded their arms through each other and are twirling around together. It has the most perfect colours, representing what I consider to be who I am inside. It’s simple. It’s abstract. It’s beautiful.

TrainerKelly’s Network, as a whole, is meant to be a strange multimedia project for me, linking things together that may otherwise be thought as separate, much like these squares. The website, TrainerKelly’s Network, is just a portal to all those projects and is the ultimate place for a link up.

I’m so excited about this logo. It, to me, represents who I am and what TrainerKelly’s Network is, even though I’m sure I am the only one who sees it that way.

I cannot wait to begin on the next set of projects and bring this logo into true use.

Now I want to print it out on a big piece of paper and take a picture with it. And make stickers. And about a billion other things. Harharhar.

(If anyone wants the two logos I’m no longer using (the star ones), you can have them.)