Irie Tools (Business & Technology)

Please take my advice, do not design your own logo (or if you have already done so, get up right now and find a professional to do it over). Unless of course, you happen to be a graphic design professional (in which case, never mind, there is no need for you to read any further).

We have all heard the advice “concentrate on your core competence and buy everything else”. Well guess what, this is good advice. I ignored this advice when I started Irie Tools, and just went ahead and designed my own logo, even though my core compentence was not graphic design. So why did I do this? Simple, I thought I had two very good reasons.

1. I did not want to risk paying for a logo design and then not liking it.
2. I did not want to go through the effort of finding a professional graphic designer.

I have used my little homebrew logo ever since then. It’s not a terrible logo (at least I don’t think so), it’s just boring and does not represent what Irie Tools is all about (except for including the name). I know I am not the only person who started a business and decided to just “do a thing” and design their own logo (you know who you are).

Today, I realized designing my own logo was a big mistake. So what made me realize this. One look at the new professionally designed Irie Tools logo, and my mistake was obvious.

The New Logo

Recently I decided to redesign the Irie Tools website, and as part of that, I wanted to redesign the logo. I started to do some sketches of what I wanted, thinking that I would do it myself. After about a week I realized that I just could not create the kind of logo I wanted. So I contacted (or tried to contact in some case, because many of them have not yet got back to me) some local graphic/web desigers. I selected IGD Jamaica and brought them my sketches. After a discussion with them I went away, and crossed my fingers, hoping for the best.

Today, I saw the designs for the new logo (IGD Jamaica did a couple designs for me to choose from). I liked all of them, but one design really blew me away. Stay tuned for a look at the new Irie Tools logo (prepare to be impressed).