While building my portfolio during the last phase of my UX bootcamp course, it was optional for us to create a logo for our brand. I wanted to have something aside from my name on the top navigation, so I spent some time designing to help establish my brand.

I thought about what I wanted to do as a designer and how I want that to be reflected in my brand.

As a designer, I wanted to help people connect with the things that they need through the products or services that I build.

What better way to show this connection than in the form of puzzle pieces; puzzle pieces alone are incomplete, but when you connect them, it creates a complete picture.

I chose a few colors for my brand that I wanted to use, including two colors inspired by the jewelry brand, Tiffany, since we share the same name. This led to my first logo design:

This logo represented the story I wanted to tell and what I aspire to do as a design. The color choices and incorporation of my name into the design would help people remember me, or so I thought.

When I attended a portfolio review session believing that I was almost “finished,” my reviewer noted that my logo may not have been the best logo design.

The text inside of the puzzle pieces was hard to read, and at the time I also went overboard incorporating my puzzle motif and brand on my landing page.

She reminded me that a good logo design is one that you can resize to any size and still recognize. It is simple but still gets the point across, like Nike’s checkmark and how it relates to their “Just do it” slogan.

She suggested that I explore a different way to use puzzle pieces or even my brand to get my values across, and advised against just using the puzzle pieces since I have not fully established my brand yet.

She also suggested to have my name or domain where the logo is, and incorporate puzzle pieces into that instead.

I took her advice and decided to just have my website domain as my logo with two connected puzzle pieces replacing the dot on the “i” for the time being until I find inspiration for a new logo.

The new “logo” didn’t feel right even if it was just a temporary one, so I decided to find inspiration from Pinterest and Instagram. I came across one designer (I forgot to save their Instagram post) who designed their logo by overlapping the letters of their name over each other in black square letters.

I decided to try it out myself, but with my initials, “TG” and “UX,” as I am branding myself as a UX designer. I wanted to keep my brand colors as they are, so I made “T” and “G” the light green-blue, and “U” and “X” the teal.

This new logo could easily be resized, is simple, and can be easily recognizable in the future; but it still didn’t feel right. I decided to change my “G” and “U” to not be block letters, but how they should look with their curves.

The curves in this version of my logo reminded me of how designers should continuously iterate on their designs to make them better. It also still relates to my brand as a designer; the letters are connected where they overlap. Because I decided to not use the square letters, the bottom of the “X” does not overlap with any letters, it shows that I am a designer who likes to think outside the box.