Coming up with a logo: How did you do it?

[bai]

I am usually really good at coming up with logos, but for my site Too Busy Streaming, I have been having trouble brainstorming since I came up with the idea!

So how did you come up with a logo? Where did you get inspiration (if any)?

[Retread]

The forum I'm associated with took inspiration from the name. The 'guitar' part is obvious.
The 'nuts' (as in crazy) was co-opted by the homonym meaning a fastener used with a bolt or machine screw.




Without knowing anything about the mission of your forum, I suppose you might play off the 'streaming' part and design a drawing with someone paddling a canoe down a stream.

You might even play off the 'busy' part by incorporating a waterfall. Here's a picture that captures the essence but I should think you'd want to create a drawing.

[Kami]

I probably approach this much differently because I do this for a living but for me "logo" and "banner image" aren't synonymous. This is because a banner image is meant to be that: a banner image. It's supposed to stretch to a certain size across your screen, and be some sort of inviting, welcoming image that shows what your site is about, with your site name on it.

A logo, on the otherhand, should quickly and concisely deliver your brand, such as the slightly merged "pb" that ProBoards uses, or the bitten apple for Apple, or the four panelled window for Microsoft (which made its name via Windows OS). Or, for less technical examples, the "golden arches" of McDonalds, the gree mermaid on Starbucks, the yellow asterisk / sunburst for Walmart, and so on. This establishes a brand for the product / site / store, so that an individual, upon seeing an image, will associate the image with a name -- or at the very least, its product -- without being told what the name is.

For forums, I usually play it safe and make a logo that uses the initials of the forum. For example for something called Guitar Nuts 2 (my apologies to Retread ) I would probably do something with GN2 and maybe some visual element that plays on guitars and/or nuts -- styling the "G" in GN2 / Guitar Nuts to look like a nut, and using the "2" to look like the tuning pegs, perhaps

Alternatively I might actually go through the effort of a logo. My RP forum uses some symbolism from the show it's based on (a chinese character, ? (ping) which can mean peace, level, or equal) combined with our forum's initials, and find a way to incorporate the symbol elsewhere on the forum.

It just all depends on what the forum theme is.