You might not think about it, but your signature can be a logo too. You can simply sign your name of course, and you should on legal documents… but many artists have a stylized form of their signature that they use to sign their finished works. If you have been following my blog since I appeared at the Raleigh Comic Convention back in August, you have seen scans of my sketches that include my signature logo.

So what is the secret origin of my logo?

For years I had been practicing variations on things that I liked. For a time I thought I might use a stylized version of my initials (SJV) in a design similar to the old Van Halen logo. It looked ok, and I was a fan of the band, but that didn’t really yield a signature that represented anything of myself. As I have said before, your logo represents you and at that point my concept did not adequately represent me.

I was always a good math and science student and was an Electrical Engineering major at NC State University, so in some ways it is odd that it took me as long as it did to come up with this design. It is simple and quite by accident very functional in communicating additional information beyond just who drew the picture.

The integral symbol represents my first initial, the root symbol represents my last initial, and the J fits snugly in there as a variable to the root function. As I settled upon this design and grew to like it, I discovered a happy accident… I could use the lower and upper limits for the integral symbol to represent the month and year, respectively.

So I ended up with a neat little signature logo that identifies me as well as when I completed the work. It also represents the analytical side of me as much as it represents the artistic side.

Do you have your own stylized signature logo design?