Sunny Zheng, Canadian Web Designer, Logo Designer, Graphic Artist, Creative Problem Solver

A Bit About My Logo Design Passion

A quarter century ago (1984) Los Angeles hosted the XXIII Olympic Games. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the Games logo. I was amazed on how powerful a logo could be - while the visual form was simple, the impact and the information it carried were unbelievable.

My memory tells me that was when my passion for logo design started. I was 16 and a university freshman majoring civil and architectural engineering.

Later that year, I entered and won the competition of the logo design for the 13th Annual Games of my department. Since then I went crazy in learning and participating in logo design.

Years later, after winning a citywide competition in Xiamen, China among hundreds of entries including those by professional designers, I became confident that logo designer could be my back-up profession if I lost interest in my career as an architect or civil engineer - in fact I did both, for 10 years before switching to the pursuit of web/graphic design happiness, not long before the dot-com boom went burst.

In the past 10 years, while designing web sites and creating graphics, I've got plenty of opportunities of designing logos for various clients and friends. I also entered the biggest competition I'd ever participated - the Vancouver 2010 Games logo, which I still believe is a great design - Unfortunately I cannot talk about that now due to the signing of certain NDA agreement with VANOC. I plan to bring this up next year when the Games are over.

I regret I didn't keep good track of what I did in the past, but my memory serves me pretty well in the very details of how I went through each of them from conception to completion. So, here is the story of the making of my personal logo, which is one of my favorite and one that pretty much sums up my design philosoph.

The Task / Design Brief

In 1999, I attended Bodwell Internet College in Vancouver, Canada, getting intensive training in Advanced Internet Development. Creating a personal logo was one of the design assignments. To me, a task like this was always a lot more exciting than learning Javascript, ASP, Coldfusion and PHP.

Here came the task and challenge: design a logo that brands yourself, reflects your personality, and/or occupation, background, hobbies etc; a logo that is unique, simple, concise, impressive and memorable; a logo that truly belong to you and that nobody else could claim theirs.

Research / Brainstorming

To start the project, like with every other logos, the first step was to do some research and brainstorming. I spent quite some time brainstorming and wrote down a list of possible things that came to my mind during this process:
1. A high contrast head shot of mine, or an illustration
2. My full Chinese Name, Ge-Nong Zheng.
3. A dove - my first name Ge-Nong can be directly translated into English as dove-breeder, symbolizing peace-keeper (Chinese way of naming convention tends to give symbolic meaning or good wish to a name, a way pretty much like a logo design. I could write a story on how my father gave names to 4 of my brothers and myself, and how I named my two sons.)
4. My english name, Sunny Zheng, sun, sunshine, something positive, outreaching, passionate
5. The initials of my name - S Z
6. A hand/palm, a symbol widely used to signify creativity
7. An eye, a symbol widely used for visual art related subject
8. Artist's palette, for my love of painting and art
9. Paint brushes, same as above
10. A heart, for passion
11. Guitar, for my love of playing classic guitar
12. Maple leaf, for Canadian
13. A globe, for world wide web
14. An @ sign, same as above
15. A mouse, for Internet
That was 15 elements/ideas already, I felt these were enough to work with. Did I miss anything important? Unlikely. OK, Let's move on to next stage.

Sketching / Idea Development

I simply turned all ideas into quick sketches (in fact, in the brainstorming stage I often use sketches already), with one or more versions for each. These can be outlined or filled version, different type faces for letters/words, etc. This is important for further idea development. After all, a logo is a visual format that delivers certain messages.

Alert - Don't be overwhelmed by too many sketches and don't know where to go next!

When my brain was working more than active and over excited, I ran into this situation. This could be a good thing or a disaster if you didn't know how to take control. I felt it was time to calm down, reassess the ideas, eliminate some that were less relevant and keep only the most important one(s), for further development. I killed most of the initial ideas and kept a simplified list.
1. A dove, not just for my name, but also freedom of creative thinking
2. Sunshine - has to do with my name and a bright personality
3. A hand/palm, for creativity
4. An eye, for visual art
5. A maple leaf, for Canadian
6. A globe, for world wide web
By now I still had 6 elements. How could I integrate them into one logo? Well, what is a false statement in math can be quite true in logo design, i.e. 1 + 1 + 1 + ... + 1 = 1, and I often enjoyed playing with this trick and got unexpected and satisfied outcome.

There is no secret, just keep sketching, with focus on combining shapes and simplifying them, until the new shape is simple enough, unique enough and beautiful enough. Don't be afraid to revisit some old ideas, or kill more in the already simplified list. Many great logos have only one major element in them.

Here is one of my sketch sheets. I remember clearly when I got the one with the hand/eye/dove combination, I knew I was almost there. I gave up the idea of making the maple leaf shape into the logo.

Revision / Refinement

I used Adobe Illustrator to draw this hand/eye/dove idea. Below you will see some refinements and how a tiny change may enhance the overall visual impact - the addition of a globe in the place of the eyeball and the openness of the lower part.

Finishing Touch / Completion

Are we there yet? Yes, but still there is always a final touch that makes a logo not just excellent, but perfect. By replacing the lower part with a brush stroke, the logo immediately gained more dynamic and was brought to life.

Oh, and the very last thing - colors! Like many great logos, my logo was designed in black and white first, then depending on the usage, different color combinations may be applied.

Below are some variations of the logo, with different color usages. Mr.SunnyZ was added recently when designing this web site. The third version has a maple leaf texture.

Upon completion of this design, I can proudly declare: this is MY logo. It is simple, concise, unique, original and memorable, yet it is sophisticated, meaningful, playful and delivers a lot of messages.

Comments / Feedback

I appreciate your patience reading this long story (I know my writing is not as good as my design skill). I would REALLY love to know your thoughts.

A Bit About My Logo Design Passion

The Task / Design Brief

Research / Brainstorming

Sketching / Idea Development

Revision / Refinement

Finishing Touch / Completion

Comments / Feedback