Getting Out of My Own Way

Are you ever paralyzed by the feeling that what you’ve created just isn’t good enough? Or that your idea of good enough is laughable to the general public? This is one of my biggest struggles as a “creator.”

Don’t laugh, but one of the (MANY) reasons it took me a decade to start blogging is because I didn’t have a “good enough” logo. I just dusted off an old hard drive and found that in an effort to brand myself before getting started, I had developed 213 versions of a logo. And I wasn’t sold on any one of them. Yikes!

Last week I decided to try something new. Around 6 o’clock on most evenings, Chief falls asleep for about 30 minutes. I challenged myself to create and publish a reasonable logo in the space of his nap. 

At 6:17 I put him in his bassinet, gazed at his sweet face, took no fewer than 32 pictures of him, cued up Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for Hurricane, and then fired up my laptop.

I kept the process simple by using my surroundings as inspiration. 

My home, when tidy, makes me feel energized, so I thought it made sense for my site name to be written in a font that mirrored my home aesthetic – clean lines that get to the point. Lots of personality with not a lot of frills.  

For the website icon I wanted to represent the fact that I loooove to put pen to paper. I never really feel like any of my ideas are going to manifest until I write them down. So I used a crayon font (at the behest of my inner child) and overlapped a ‘p’ and a ‘d.’

The final touch was a bit of color. I literally just. Picked. A. Color.  

The final product is before you. 

And you know what? I like it! It will likely change down the line, but right now, this gets things moving.

I published the logo at 6:41. Chief woke up at 6:43. Mission accomplished. 

Do you have a project you’ve been putting off that you can accomplish in 30 minutes? I bet you do! Surprise yourself!

Have Fun!