Logos

(possible Qol Press logo)

Every press needs a logo. I've been burning through tons and tons of possible designs. Sometimes I've been consulting with others, especially the cover artist for the first book, who helped me refine some of my ideas.

The difficulty with designing a logo is that I have to consider at least three main points:

• It has to be recognizable and nice-looking at a range of sizes, since it'll show up on the spine of the book, the title page of the book, and my future website (which is in the works, actually). It might be anywhere from .5"x.5" to 2"x2" or more--and it has to look consistent at those sizes. This means that it has to be relatively simple. 

Something that looks nice when large may look blurry when shrunk down...

...or really pixelated.
Also, by a similar token, it has to be monochrome. At first, I tried doing black and white, using negative space to make the design more interesting. But the negative space may not look right due to bleed, and--at least on the spine--printing part in white might look tacky.


• It can't already be trademarked or similar to another press's logo. This means that a lot of the simple, straightforward logos that initially come to mind just won't work.

Oh, I know, I'll use a mountain--

 

Okay, a tree sounds simple enough--

(repeat ad inifinitum)

• It has to represent my books or my press in a meaningful way, or, at the very least, be related to them. It can't be too abstract, though--that'd defy the "simple" rule above--and it has to be be unique. 

I tried thirty or forty different designs, and I'm still not satisfied. I like the design I posted at the top of the page, but I'm not sure whether it's up to snuff just yet. What do all of you think?