I thought making a simple symbol would be the easiest part of starting a business

Getting stuck on the shape of a symbol

When I first started looking into what it takes to actually launch a brand, I thought the logo or the symbol part would be the fun, creative break in the middle of all the tedious paperwork. I spent hours scrolling through different reference sites for hospital CI designs and random rice brand logos in Busan, thinking I could just sketch something out that looked decent enough. It turns out, moving from a rough idea in my head to something that actually works on a business card is a massive headache. Every time I added a shape, it started looking like something else entirely. My partner kept saying it looked too much like a generic icon you’d find in a free stock library, which didn’t help my motivation at all.

The reality of trademark legalities

Someone mentioned to me—rather casually, over coffee—that if the symbol I designed ended up looking too similar to an existing registered mark, the whole thing could be a waste of time and money. I looked into the costs for professional trademark registration, and it’s not exactly pocket change; the process can easily run anywhere from 300,000 to over 1,000,000 won depending on how many classes you’re filing for and whether you need a lawyer to do the heavy lifting. I started worrying that if I just kept changing the font or adding a little graphic element to my text-based name, I’d be setting myself up for a legal mess later on. It feels like you’re trapped between wanting a unique brand identity and being terrified that a small tweak to your design will make it legally unrecognizable from what you filed.

Watching others do it differently

I’ve been watching how bigger brands handle their symbols, and it’s strangely distracting. For instance, I saw that Xexymix was giving away these ‘symbol crew socks’ if you spent over 150,000 won, and even games like MapleStory M have these elaborate item systems involving ‘symbol enhancement’ cards. It’s funny how a ‘symbol’ means something completely different in a marketing context versus a branding one. In my case, I just wanted a simple mark for a small entity, but the pressure to make it feel ‘official’ is constant. I keep oscillating between paying a freelancer to fix my mess and just doing nothing for another week because I’m paralyzed by the fear that whatever I pick will look dated in six months.

The lingering uncertainty of my choices

I’m currently sitting at about the three-week mark of trying to finalize this, and honestly, I’m still not convinced I’m on the right track. I have a folder on my desktop with about twenty variations of a simple geometric shape, and every time I open it, I like them less than I did the day before. It’s not even that the designs are bad, they just feel uninspired. I’ve started wondering if I should have just stuck with a clean, typography-only logo and left the symbols to the companies with bigger marketing budgets. I don’t really have a clear answer on whether to push forward with my current design or scrap it for something simpler. For now, it’s just sitting there, taking up space in my mind and on my hard drive, waiting for me to actually decide on something.