Logo Grow

Is a company a real company if it doesn’t have a logo? Not if you judge it by American capitalism since, oh, 1960.

Starting in high school, I played around with logo designs as an extension of musings about what would I call my own company. This, in turn, was the natural extension of the high school activity of thinking about what one would do after high school. Designing logos was the easy and fun part.

I came up with logos for a variety of businesses:

• Illustration services
• Engineering design
• Film company
• Detective agency
• Animation studio
• Apparel design
• Distribution company

They all happen to be creative outlets. Considering that I would be pointing my nose in the direction of university engineering studies, these diverse pursuits could have been a premonition of the mega-corporations of today. Or perhaps not. I don’t think Amazon or Warner Brothers either have detective agencies in their respective families of divisions.

It was a fun exercise. The fun was topped by imagining a corporation for them all. That corporation was called Monster Enterprises. If you’re paying attention, “Monster” is a play on my last name “Mon.” It was an is better than most other puns on my name like “Monkey Co.” and “Money Maker, Inc.”

In college, I developed a character called “Monster” which was to be what Mickey Mouse was to Walt Disney. Intentionally, I took the three letters of my last name and mashed them to be the basis of Monster’s face. With that, I moved to formalize the corporation idea with a logo that used the same Monster’s face that served double duty as the “Mo” that begins “Monster.” Unfortunately, right now any copies of drawings of that character are buried deep in some moving box. I think I attempted a visual link by pairing the “TER” common to both “Monster” and “Enterprises.” I still think that maybe I should conflate the two into “Monsterprises.”

Monster as a character evolved as needed in a couple of comic strips all while serving as the corporate mascot. Around 2010 or as late as 2013, I re-designed the corporate mascot Monster to be specific and distinctly different than the ones used in comic strips. Much of this design, borrowed from my Cartoon Network job. Think Fred Flintstones and “Billy and Mandy“ as the nose inspiration.

By 2013, the corporate logo was updated with the new corporate mascot design. Here, I pushed the letter forms to NOT be reminiscent of the “Disney” logo type. The forms have saw-tooth jaggedness, asymmetry and breaks. Here, also, Monster’s ears were left off for better “Monster” legibility.

For the logo icon, Monster’s earless face was isolated and often is placed in a circle. 

This year, Monster’s face has been completed with ears and a defined face/head shape. It seemed necessary for the icon/logo. While I attempted to place the new head into the logo type, in doing so hampered legibility. Too many thick lines, I think. Other detail adjustments include a slightly smaller face compared to his nose and the long cowlick hairs were changed as to not appear to be an “F” and an “N.” Since the icon and the logo type are different, the icon head can be a bit rotated counter clockwise.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the logo gets re-designed again within ten years. That seems to be what all the big companies do.