Today’s Blogging 101 task was to take control of the title and taglines on our blogs.
I am one to put a lot of thought into titles, handles and usernames. As much as we bloggers, writers and Internet creators are people first, I am a fan of personal branding. A “brand” helps keep all my original writing/creations under one identity which is tied to my name and values.
(It’s a whole other post to examine the why of personal branding. What structures made it feel necessary? What bits of ourselves fall through the cracks when we give ourselves a brand? How do we keep the fluidity of being human alive? These are questions for another day…)
About a year ago I was mulling over what to call myself in relation to writing online. I forever love name puns, and had started playing around with my new-ish initials, CH, to make my name sound partly like “reach.” I went by @and_reach on Instagram and Twitter, and it was time to claim my blog space. Many platforms don’t allow underscores and/or had andreach taken, so adding the “out” was a bit of improvisation. But since it fits in with my goals of speaking out and reaching out to create positive change in society, I stuck with it.
I took to Illustrator for a brainstorming session to figure out how to graphically represent my identity (including a tentative tagline).
These are my first two attempts, playing around with font and emphasis.
I wound up tweaking the tagline font and going with the one below, for now. Something about having a heavy font seemed to work, so the title is all in Poplar STD black. Since the socially conscious aspect is a primary value right now, I kept the emphasis on the “reachout” instead of the name. Purple seemed to work best, but I’m still testing out colors (and right now the header titles are a mismatch with the logo).
The idea behind the new tagline was to be simple and specific, but with enough leeway to actually find a voice.
However, I also thought about “Digital Humanity” or “Humanely designed” as a tagline. Finding a font called “Hacked” may be partly responsible for this.
What say you, fellow bloggers? I’m open to feedback!
andreachout.wordpress.com 
I really like the logo with the narrow letters for out. It makes it stand out a little more without being too overboard.
The more I look at it, I like it without colors, too, just letting the font do the talking. I’ll be trying different things for awhile but thanks for your thoughts.
When reading your first two efforts, they left me confused, mainly because I wondered: What is your goal with the tagline / logo? Emphasizing your name + initials (Andrea CH) or your focus (reaching out)? (Honestly, I was not sure at first if your name was Andrea, so had to search around for your introduction page, or if it looked that way because the text was all one color for “andreach.”) That being said, now that I know your name as well as your goal, I do love that it’s a play on your name + initials and goals! Have you considered a design in which your name+initials are the same font, different colors (as in option 2), but “out” is in either different font or all caps?
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for this feedback. It’s very helpful!
I like how much effort you put into deciding how to brand. Kind of like me having to proof read everything to death before I put it out to the public. Look forward to reading more.
I like the purple. Suits you. And I like the first one for the thinner letters for “out” 😀
I like the third, but your tag words are difficult to read- too small. Wide range – media? design? social justice? I’d like to know how they link.
Great point about the tag words being too small to read. I’ll work on that.
Hopefully a few of my next posts will make those links more clear.
The last logo rocks! I find your writing style to be engaging and the read was entertaining
I’ve only come across your blog so I’m not sure how it was before.
I like the logo, and I like how you’re doing personal branding.
Humanely designed to me sounds like you will be discussing ethical issues within the art or designing world eg the problems with mining etc. Is this the sort of thing you discuss or is the media and design element seperate to the times you discuss social justice. If it’s the later then I don’t think the new tag line quite explains the purpose of your blog and id prefer the original.
This is actually my first logo, so you didn’t miss much!
Thanks for letting me know what “humanely designed” made you think of. Media and ethics/social justice do overlap in my writing, but I don’t think I’ll be talking about anything as specific as mining. I can see how “humanely designed” might make people think of something like fairly made products or jewelry – not my expertise at all… so I’ll avoid using that title.
I really appreciate your feedback.
glad I could help 🙂
Definitely prefer that you decided on the single font and two colors, it looks cleaner which is much like the overall appearance of your blog 😉
Digital Humanity is kind of a catchy tagline, but it might be a tad vague? Just what I think. Keep it up! Just keeping creating and you’ll eventually find your groove I suppose xx