Creation of the Bicycle Touring 101 logos

Determining the logo to use for a website is an important process especially when it's a website like this one that embodies something that's both enjoyable and after numerous tours very significant to me personally.

I thought about the logo for about two weeks while producing the first forty-five web pages. Eventually some common elements started to form in my brain and it was time to try drawing a picture.

I've never seen myself as an artist when it comes to drawing things. In fact the last thing that I drew and liked was a shoe back in elementary school (grade six). Since then my creativity has been focused on writing, photography and computer programming. I doubt if I've drawn anything outside of a screen outline in at least twenty years.

( Information about what the various items in the logo mean can be found on the Understanding the logo web page )

I never claimed to be an artist now did I?

However after four attempts I finally had something! Of course paper isn't good if you want to investigate asking a graphics artist for assistance so you need to redo the image using a graphics tool. That was a fun experience let me tell you! (grin)

I contacted my website hosting service provider to see if they could recommend a graphics artist. To my surprise they offered the service so we got started.

Although my original drawing showed North America centered in the globe I requested including either Australia/New Zealand or Europe with North America if possible because so many of the site's readers seem to come from outside North America. In the end we had to place Europe on the globe instead of Australia/New Zealand because the book placement made those locations invisible unfortunately (although I did briefly consider putting the world upside down)

In a short period of time Joe came back with his first attempt at cleaning up the image that I had provided.

A quick review with two of my friends sent it back for revision. This is when what I like to call the "brainstorming" session started (although I bet Joe thinks of this time period as the "tearing out the hair" time.

Joe continued to brainstorm and came up with a number of great ideas. One of them was the logo displayed above.

During one long conversation we talked about a graphic to use for the first page. He suggested something bicycling related like a wheel.

This got me thinking and I started trying to incorporate the wheel idea into the home page. I had wanted to include pointers to major sections on that page for awhile so this process really gave me a chance to think about it some more.

Of course this led to the second "hair tearing" session. In my original tire design there was no hub. Instead I requested that Joe incorporate the above logo as a sidewall design in the tire.

Joe hadn't been idle while all this was going on. He came up with the circular logo design that ultimately evolved to become the hub of the wheel pictured to the left. and in the end he added the site name to the sidewall too!

Now the logo design is complete and I am very, very happy with it. It contains all of the elements that I wanted to include while doing so in a manner that is far beyond what I originally hoped for.

Working with Joe was a pleasure. It wasn't free but it was worth every dollar.

If you need graphics work done and you want someone who can produce great work as well as give you tons of very useful advice then I strongly suggest that you consider contacting Joe to request his assistance.