Stumbling through the process of making a logo for my side project
Getting stuck on a simple mark
I spent the better part of last Tuesday staring at a blank Photoshop canvas. I thought it would be easy—just a wordmark, something clean that looked like a professional academy or a small design office in Seoul. Everyone says it’s just about ‘brand identity,’ but when you’re sitting there at 2 AM trying to figure out if your font choice looks like a serious corporation or just some amateur guild mark for a gaming clan, you start to second-guess everything. I looked at some of the bigger firms online, places like Bandi Logo or some of the older spots in Hongdae that claim 17 years of history, and I felt a bit ridiculous trying to do it myself with zero background in design theory.
The endless cycle of iterations
I think I went through about forty different versions of the same three letters. My biggest mistake was getting too attached to the first sketch. It looked okay on my screen, but as soon as I mocked it up on a mock-up template, it lost all its weight. I started searching for how these design agencies actually work, and realized that places like the Seoul Logo Design Institute probably have a whole pipeline that I’m just skipping over. I briefly considered reaching out for a professional quote, but the prices for a full CI design package often start around 500,000 KRW and can go way up depending on the scope. For a small side project, that felt like a massive gamble that I wasn’t ready to take.
Deciding against the quick fix
There’s this pressure to just go to one of those ‘free business card making’ websites and use their templates. It’s tempting because it solves the problem in fifteen minutes for almost nothing. But then you see another shop using the exact same generic icon, and you realize your ‘brand’ isn’t really a brand at all. I noticed this a lot when looking at local SNS accounts; everything starts to blur together after a while. I found myself obsessing over the line thickness of the letters, spending hours adjusting the kerning, only to delete the whole thing and start over. It’s frustrating how something so small can occupy your entire weekend.
Why I still haven’t settled on a final version
I’m at the point where I don’t even know if the logo is the actual problem, or if I’m just procrastinating on the work that’s supposed to follow the logo. I keep thinking about those collaborations between brands like Alpha Industries and Vandy The Pink—how they lean into that heavy, literal aesthetic with patches and bold artwork. Maybe I’m overthinking the subtlety. Maybe it just needs to be loud. It’s hard to tell when you’ve been looking at the same file for three days straight. My eyes are tired, and honestly, the draft I have saved right now is probably going to look entirely different by tomorrow morning, assuming I don’t just give up and leave it as plain text.
Feeling the weight of the invisible details
I keep wondering if a customer ever looks at a logo and actually feels the things the designers promise—’trust,’ ‘professionalism,’ ‘vision.’ Or do they just see a shape that tells them what the place is? I suspect it’s the latter. Yet, I’m still here, agonizing over whether the curves are too soft for a company logo. Maybe if I had just paid for a professional service at the start, I’d be sleeping right now. But there’s a strange, stubborn part of me that wants to see if I can actually pull it off, even if it ends up looking a bit rough around the edges.
