A few years ago while I was still living in my tiny box apartment in New York City, I was freelancing as a graphic designer. While it was exciting to work with all walks of life including small businesses, I became frustrated with the whole designing bit. One of the reasons for my frustration was the incessant need for my clients to want too much information on every design. They wanted so much info on their business cards that it made them look like crowded flyers. But, "the customer knows best" is a term I hear thrown around in the business world all too easily and so, I decided to go with the flow. This completely contradicted my belief system, which is a little thing called "simplicity".
Gsting Logo 2009
In those days my sister and I ran a design company called Gsting, with the slogan “start creating”. With my design background and my sister's marketing skills, our goal was to create aesthetically pleasing and visually interesting designs for small business, in order to make them look like the big corporations. Little did we know most small businesses have no sense of branding or consistency. It took us about two years to become displeased with the whole market and we both decided to venture elsewhere. My sister moved her focus to interior design and I went back to my first passion, drawing comics.
Having worked in the design field for over 10 years now, I've always favored having a brand to represent myself and my work. I decided to evolve our old company logo since after all, what I was doing was in some way related to what I will be doing from now on.
“It is a symbol and reminder to myself
to focus on my art and expand
my learning in drawing comics.”
Current Haro Logo since 2016
The new logo which I call "Haro" (pronounced" har-oh) is actually the way my mom pronounces my name and it symbolizes the new voice that says: "this is me!", hence the speech bubble. It is a symbol and reminder to myself to focus on my art and expand my learning in drawing comics.
I hope you will be able to follow my adventure into the comic art world and learn with me.
Until next time, #drawwatuwant.
-Haro