Hello all, I’m finally getting around to blogging about the new Rate Your Story logo that I designed! Due to a very busy time in my personal life I have been behind in my blog posts, and I wanted to be able to spend some time explaining about the process and the experience of the design of the logo.

If you are a writer and aren’t familiar with Rate Your Story, then you should definitely check them out: http://rateyourstory.blogspot.com/
You can submit your story of any genre for a 1-10 rating by published writers, free of charge! So before you submit your story or article to a publisher, agent, or magazine, why not have a professional take a peek and give you a rating?

Back earlier in 2012, Miranda Paul of Rate Your Story put out a call to illustrators who might be interested in designing a new logo for the website. So I scribbled out a couple of my ideas for the logo and sent them in. I was thrilled when I was contacted a few weeks later and was told that they liked my design and would I be interested  in designing the logo? You bet!
I eagerly began cleaning up my original design and chose a font and color. Miranda and the other judges would make suggestions and I would do the revisions and send them back. Here is one of my early drafts of the logo based on my first design:

What came next was, I’ll admit at the time, a bit of a heartbreak for me: they liked the logo, but they wondered if I would mind submitting some different ideas for the logo? I could tell that Miranda was nervous asking me as she knew I had put some time and work already into the logo. I was sad, but I wanted them to be happy; this was after all, their logo! As an artist I must admit that there are times where we fall in love with our ideas, and as an artist you have to be able to take constructive criticism and face the fact that others may just not be as in love with your ideas and designs as you are (the nerve, LOL!). Man I loved those stars! Could I please keep the stars?

Back when I was in school, one of my professors whom I admire greatly, Brian Sauriol, taught us that it’s not a good idea to fall too in love with our work. He would demonstrate this by taking a piece that he spent hours painting, hold it up in front of the class, and destroy it (to the collective groan of the class). Why? Because by falling in love with our work we are essentially making ourselves smaller as an artist. If we get too involved with our work we are not as open to new ideas or viewpoints, and we don’t push ourselves or explore alternative ideas. I pondered that lesson as I got out my sketchpad and set to work on new some designs.

I sketched out some very rough ideas and submitted them, but I wasn’t that thrilled with them. I felt they were a bit boring and flat. There was a lot of back and forth ideas and suggestions through e-mail. Someone had suggested using a person in the logo, so I did another rough sketch. I was happy that that one was scrapped as I felt that the logo was too busy with a person in it. But that didn’t stop me from sneaking in more stars!

Then one day I had an image come to me; I felt it was a long shot away from what they were looking for, but I submitted it anyway with hope. Miranda wrote back that they liked it! I was thrilled because I really liked this design!

The first final logo that I submitted is pretty much straight from my rough sketch.

Miranda replied that they loved it! I was very happy too. Then one more suggestion from Rate Your Story (“What??” my inner artist cried. “But isn’t it perfect as it is?”)
They asked if I could remove the periods from after the numbers, and I feel the logo is cleaner without them.  Also, the original final logo that I submitted had a white background.  Miranda humbly asked if maybe I could add some color, and expand the quill beyond the border?

Viola! A new logo is born! The above logo, which is longer than the logo that I have at the top of this blog post, was originally modified for the Facebook Page; however we found that it also fit the actually Rate Your Story webpage better than the original condensed logo.  So the above logo is what is now displayed at the top of the page.

I also created badges that will be given to people who submit their stories to Rate Your Story to display on their own blogs and webpages. So get busy submitting!

So in the end, Rate Your Story has a spiffy new logo that they are very happy with, and I am very proud to have been able to design it. Not only that, but it was a great experience and it helped me to push the envelope with my own ideas, and the end result I feel is by far better than my original idea for the logo (even without any stars!).

Thank you Miranda Paul and Rate Your Story!