Rob Morgan Logo Design

I will admit I am well outside of my area of expertise with an assignment such as this but I am giving it my best shot.

I decided to try updating the logo for my department at JMU (IT Training) I knew that I wanted something simple that had text saying what our department was since it is unlikely we would ever become popular enough to be recognized by symbol alone. I then got out a piece of paper and a pencil and started writing down what I thought IT Training (ITT) represented. Once I had some ideas written down I tried drawing a few things but my lack of artistic ability quickly overwhelmed my most enthusiastic efforts. So...I turned to google and looked for sites that could help me turn my ideas into reality. I found a site called logo garden that did just that.

I started going through my list of ideas as to what training is and trying to connect that with images. My first idea was that ITT was a piece of the puzzle so I looked for an abstract puzzle as an image.

It worked but I thought it looked a little too boring and 1980's.

My next idea was that ITT helps guide you down the right path or "partners" with you on your journey. So I looked for images that fit that idea and came up with this.

Not terrible but I didn't think it was too exciting either.

My next idea was that ITT is a bridge between where you are and where you are going. There are a lot of training organizations that have this same idea so there is no lack of Training logos with bridges on them in the world. I thought I would try to go a little more abstract with the bridge though and got this.

This was my favorite so far but I still was not satisfied. I thought it was a little to "star trek" not sure why but every time I looked at it I thought of star trek. So I moved on.

My next though was to just go obvious and since we train on technology I should use a logo that showed technology. I played with some computers, tablets, circuits, etc. And finally landed on this mouse.

Unfortunately, this is just too obvious for me. I think the only thing worse would be having a picture of a train since we do "train"ing. I was not a fan of the obvious clip art like logo so I tried again.

The last thing I had written down was that we "present ideas" "share ideas" "explore new options" when I thought of the word explore or idea I thought of a light bulb. So I looked for some light bulb images and found this one.

This was the first logo I looked at and thought had potential. So I stuck to this one and started playing around with color. I added the JMU purple to the light bulb.

I decided to start playing around with colors and fonts and I also decided to try making the light bulb a little smaller so that your attention was drawn to IT Training since that should be the focus.

I felt like making the light bulb smaller and the lighter color helped make IT Training stand out in the logo. Here is the final version of the logo. I added some shadow effects to the text and went with a Serif font since I thought it made the "I" in IT stand out a little bit better.