Designing A New Logo

In the seemingly never-ending musings about a blog redesign round these parts, I asked on Friday last week about my logo/tagline combo (the little Grace Driven Fiction circle). That prompted some sketching and, while I don’t necessarily consider myself uber artistic, I was pleased enough with how things ended up, that I thought I’d meander through the process here in case it might catch someone’s interest.

First up, I was considering the tagline: Romance…with room for thought. It’s a bit of a riff on the idea of coffee with room for cream (how you order at your favorite coffee shop if you want coffee and to add cream to it after you get it.) So…kind of an obscure thought process, but I thought it was kind of clever and it sparked this little doodle.

I liked how the steam from the coffee formed a heart and, if you look closely (yeah, it’s a bad photo, sorry) you can see the cream pitcher is pouring little thought bubbles into the cup. And yet…obscure. Or perhaps too clever. Either way, it didn’t really work and I could just imagine that I’d spend a lot of time explaining it to people and getting blank looks. Never what you’re going for with a logo and tagline.

A little conversation with my sister sparked the idea of using a flower (she suggested daisies…but I really don’t like them, either if, per You’ve Got Mail, they’re the friendliest flower.) But I love violets. And a little poking about on the Internet revealed that they’re used to symbolize modesty, the trials and tribulations of love, and faithfulness within those trials. Now, if you’ve read any of my books, you’re probably making checkmarks right along with me! I was stoked. So I doodled some violets.

I played around with having a book in the center, or books as leaves. Finally, I decided I liked the shape of the darker violet there in the picture above, but that was about it. About this time, I also decided on the tagline: Thoughtfully Romantic. It still embodies the idea that there’s enough in my books to engender deeper thoughts on Christian living, should you so choose, but, at their heart, they’re romantic. (And I love that that applies to my women’s fiction trilogy (Remnants) as well as my straight up romances.)

So I played with the idea of a bunch of violets and that tagline and came up with this…

Bunch of violets? Check. Books? Check. Tagline? Yup. But…an unscientific survey of my family said my book butterflies read too childish. Whimsical? Absolutely. Romance writer? Not so much. Still…I wanted books in there along with the violet! And thus I fiddled with the following:

If you follow my Facebook page, you might have seen that posted on Friday or Saturday (can’t remember which.) And I’m pretty pleased with it as a concept. But of course, a pencil sketch does not a logo make and here’s where I need your thoughts. I spent a little time colorizing the above…let me know which one you like best and why? Please?

Option 1:

Option 2:

Option 3:

Option 4: