What's in my Logo?

What's in my logo?

I've always wanted a logo that mattered, that represented my craft and above all - creative. Sometimes these design elements take a long time to assemble. We scribble notes and make sketches, scrutinize every line, symbol and space to communicate a message. It's a lot of work, worry and uncertainty. We started sixteen years ago with this new company and finally this year the logo and tagline are complete.

For the longest time, our logo consisted of the name of the company with the tagline. Name of the company on top, a line and the tagline on the bottom. The letter 'y' and it's tail breaking the line and pointing the word Greek. It worked for awhile until I wanted a logo incorporating more information. Wanted to use one logo only for all marketing purposes. What happened next was easy because I was paying attention and open. And by accident IT happened. A few years ago, I printed a black and white picture of myself five years old that my mother had taken of me. I printed this picture large on 8.5 x 11 on plain paper from my copier and was put it on the refrigerator to show my daughter. A few days later, I noticed my picture was edited and in place of my eyes my daughter put circular Greek flag magnets (which were made by Kantyli). For some reason that picture with Greek flag eyeballs became the face of the our company and it's used in the 'About us' section. It conveyed to me that from a young age I had developed a passion for Greek things.

Then one night it happened. I went upstairs and sat at the kitchen table. It was late, quiet and the table was completely clean, and light was great. Only the picture, trace paper and 5B soft lead pencil lead were on the table. The inspiration hit me quickly. I drew two quick circles around my childhood face, one large and one smaller with same diameter center. It was enough space to put the tagline on top, phone number, name of company and even sneaked in an email address.  With all this information it conveys everything I needed it too. Looks professional and fun. I like it. It describes my passion and the products. I can also rotate the circle abit to suggest that the owner is bet 'off ' to come up with the products he has. The logo is finally done after sixteen years of prodding and asking myself what am I.

UPDATE

Or so I thought. The logo tag line is going to change slightly. I will be changing our tagline to 'Custom Greek Gifts' and adding 'Δώρα στα Ελληνικά' (Gifts in the Greek language), sometimes its not possible to translate word for word. I've contacted a Greek teacher and he told this is as close as you are going to get.