Geeky Logo
Since I moved my blog from Movable Type to WordPress, I’ve been wanting to do something about the standard goofy grin picture I was using in the sidebar. A picture with a less goofy grin, or a logo perhaps. And something that I could shrink down to favicon size if I was lucky. This was the tricky part.
In days gone by I used to create monochrome 8 x 8 bit maps on graph paper for creations on my old Atari 400, you would think a 16 x 16 image with a nearly limitless palette of colors would be easier. It’s not. I guess I’m out of practice. I’d tried a silhouette of the state with the word Geek in it and that looked pretty stupid. I also tried something like the Titans logo with the word Geek and that wasn’t much better. But the Titans logo is based, somewhat, on the state flag of Tennessee, so I started playing with that. I tried, at first, to spell out Geek somehow in the shape of the stars. Again, ew. But I noticed that if you lopped of two triangles from a star it resembled the insignia of Star Fleet. That might work.
I didn’t want to use three Star Trek symbols though, besides not being huge Star Trek fan, I wouldn’t want to give the impression that this site is all about Star Trek. I started thinking, what are three sort of traditionally geeky things that interest me? If I could come up with three things and (hopefully) a (vaguely) star shaped symbol for each star in the Tennessee flag, it might look pretty good. Maybe?
First, I already had the Star Trek logo in mind. That symbol would represent my interest in science fiction and fantasy. I’m more of a pop sci-fi / fantasy guy, but whatever.
Second, I needed something to represent my interest in computers. I though briefly about a Mac Classic silhouette, but decided to go with an Apple logo. At least until they decide to sue me.
Third, I wanted something for video games. I played around with a World of Warcraft logo, and an Alliance logo. Neither looked great and they weren’t generic enough anyway. Then I thought about my old Atari. Yeah, it was a computer, but it was also my first video game system, so I went with that.
The result is the logo you now see (unless you’re reading this in the future where I’ve decided it doesn’t look very good after all) at the top of the right sidebar. Not bad. Certainly better than the goofy grin. And it even kind of shrinks down to favicon size. You might not be able to tell what it is at 16 x 16 if you’ve not seen it before, but once you’ve seen it, the white blobby things become somewhat recognizable.