So, you’re tinkering with a little something, a project, maybe a community, and you think, “It needs a logo!” Yeah, I’ve been there. Recently, it was this ‘nym’ thing I was messing with. And let me tell you, what seems like a simple task can really suck you in.
My little adventure with the nym logo
First things first, what even was ‘nym’ about? For me, it was all about privacy, keeping things a bit on the down-low. So, the logo couldn’t be all flashy and loud, you know? It had to have that vibe. Mysterious, maybe a bit understated.
I didn’t jump straight into fancy software. Nope. Grabbed a trusty notepad and a pen. Just started doodling. My first scribbles were, well, pretty awful. Think generic spy movie clichés. Masks, silhouettes, all that jazz. Most of it went straight into the mental bin.
Then I thought, okay, let’s try to be a bit more structured. Fired up a really basic graphics program I had. Nothing complicated, just something to draw straight lines and curves. I wasn’t about to spend weeks learning some pro tool for this. The goal was to get something decent, not to become a design guru overnight.
I tried a few approaches:
- The “Hidden” concept: Played around with shapes that looked like they were peeking out from behind something. Like an eye looking through a slit. Too on the nose, maybe.
- Abstract lines: Thought about using interwoven lines, suggesting complexity or a network, but also with gaps, for that anonymity feel. Looked a bit like a messy ball of yarn.
- Letter play: The project was ‘nym’. So, I figured, why not use the letters? Especially the ‘N’. Could I make an ‘N’ look… shifty? Or protected?
This is where I hit a wall. Spent a good few hours, maybe more, just pushing pixels. Everything I made either looked like something I’d seen a hundred times before or was just plain ugly. You get that tunnel vision, staring at the screen, and it all just blurs together. Frustrating stuff.
Then I decided to simplify. Radically. Forget fancy metaphors. What’s the core? Anonymity. Discretion. I focused back on that ‘N’. I started breaking it apart, making it incomplete. Like parts of it were there, but other parts were deliberately missing or obscured. The idea was to suggest an identity that isn’t fully revealed.
I tried a few variations of this fragmented ‘N’. One version had sharp edges, another was a bit softer. I also played with enclosing it in a very subtle, almost incomplete shield shape. Not a full-blown crest, just a hint of protection.
For colors, I kept it dead simple. Black and white, or a very dark, muted blue. Figured I could always mess with colors later if needed, but for a start, monochrome felt right for the “undercover” theme. Adding color too early just complicates things, gives you more ways to mess it up.
Finally, I landed on something. Was it a masterpiece? Nah, probably not. But it felt… right for what I needed. It was a stylized ‘N’, a bit disjointed, giving that feeling of something not quite whole, not quite seen. It wasn’t shouting for attention. It was just there, doing its job quietly. Good enough. Sometimes “good enough” is the real win, especially when you’re just trying to get a small thing off the ground. You could spend forever polishing, but at some point, you’ve just got to call it done and move on to the next thing, right?
