Sketches: Kyle's Inventions

This year, I've decided to give my seven-year-old a gift every bit as appropriate as the iPod Touch was to a six-year-old — his very own logo!

Don't you give me that look...

One of the first things I did after my company logo was finished was to order a mug with it — more than one, now that I think of it — which now sits proudly on the shelf next to my desk, holding my set of fine-tipped Sharpie Markers. I think it was all of $15. (I also spent $200 on a very small number of embroidered baseball caps, but those were better times.) So I thought it would be fun to design a logo for my son (for a fictitious business), and get him some stuff — a mug, a magnet, a cap, perhaps even a sweatshirt. I think it will be a nice surprise.

There's a long and fabled tradition in design of concepts being sketched out on cocktail napkins — this one was on the back of a receipt from the grocery store.

My son is preoccupied with machines, and the making of his own machines, and I knew the idea of "gears" would appeal to him. (I thought about trying to make a "K" out of the teeth of a gear, but that wasn't going to work.) And he says he wants to be an inventor when he grows up.I ended up going in a slightly unexpected direction with the type, because I had trouble finding the perfectly circular "e" that I wanted to use. (In the end, I think I redrew the "e" from this typeface to make it work the way I wanted.) But it worked out better than I had expected, and I think it provides a sort of classic "mechanical" look that fits well with the gears.

(Originally, it was just going to be "Kyle Inventions," but I thought it would make more sense to a seven-year-old as "Kyle's Inventions.")

I set up the various products late last night, and I'll order them soon. (I only hope my seven-year-old is a less harsh critic than some of the people I've done work for through the years.)