Logo for the Portal

While thinking about the introduction for this post, I thought of this sentence: “I wasted two hours of my life creating a logo for this blog.” After seeing my final product, however, I don’t feel at all that the time I spent was time wasted.

I’m no graphic designer, and I have no aspiration to be one, so of course, the logo I’ve created isn’t much to look at. Not Olympics-worthy. But I’m pleased with myself. For this blog, I was again forced to be more creative, to do something I usually don’t dare to do, just like what happened when I had to draw the burial jars in the Silliman University Anthropological Museum because picture taking was not allowed (or, more accurately, because the surveillance camera was right above the jars).

The logo is really nothing more than the letter P inside three circles whose sides touch at some points. The letter stands of course for portal and plateau. I didn’t use two P’s or PTTP (for Portal to the Plateau) because it would be more work for me. I felt that the more complex the design, the greater my chance of screwing up. The simpler the better, as the cliché goes.

Don’t ask me what the three circles mean. They don’t freaking mean anything. The shape does not represent cycle of life, the world, or similar stuff. The number of circles does not represent a number of places, persons, or tribes. They’re there for aesthetic purposes. While I’m at it, let me tell you that the color, likewise, has no particular significance. I used red to match the dominant color of the layout of this blog, and I chose this design template because this seems to be the most “tribal” among the templates Blogger offers.

Using the logo, I also created a masthead (or a Facebook cover photo, though I didn’t bother to check if the size is appropriate). For the URL, I used the font MV Boli, which I’ve been using recently to mark the photos in this blog. I want to use Longfoot in Pixlr.com, but the font seems to be exclusive only to the website, and as I’ve told you in my previous posts, I’m back here in Kulaman Plateau, where there’s no reliable Internet connection. So I mark my photos now using MV Boli, which is available in Microsoft products and in PhotoScape, a free and downloadable photo editing software.

I’m not changing yet the header of this blog. For the meantime, I’m using the logo and the masthead for posts and pages only. If ever I change the header, I might incorporate the image of Ilyan Hill that I manipulated using PhotoScape. It’s a red silhouette of the mystical hill, and I also spent two hours tinkering with the original image. It took that long because I was just starting to explore the software. Again, it wasn’t time wasted. I think no matter the output, the time I spend for this blog is never time wasted.