A few months ago, I had the pleasure of answering a few questions for an article being written by my friend Elliot Jay Stocks for .net Magazine (Practical Web Design here in the States). Elliot quoted me quite nicely in the article, but I thought it would be interesting to publish my complete answers here, along with his questions, and he kindly gave his permission.

Note: The article itself is full of some solid information and quotes some bright minds — well worth picking up if you get the chance (as is the rest of the issue).

EJS: Please could you tell us a bit about yourself and your work with logos so far?

DR: I’ve always loved logos, and some of my earliest experiments with design were logotypes (I tend to prefer type-driven logos with minimal imagery). I don’t get as many opportunities to design logos for clients as I’d like, but I do a fair amount for friends and personal projects, sometimes for imaginary ideas just as an excuse to design a logo or logotype.

EJS: Which logo (that you’ve designed) are you most proud of and why?

DR: I’m torn between the current logo for SuperfluousBanter and a logo I did a few years ago for a real estate company that by brother was starting. I put most of the work I do into two categories: design for myself, and design for others — so those are my current favorites from each category.

In the case of SuperfluousBanter’s current logo (there have been a few over the years), the “sb” mark on an orange field sporting a lighter spiral (with the counter of the “b” over the center of the spiral) has a nice balance of symmetry and asymmetry at the same time, without getting complicated.

With the logo for the real estate firm, the business name was that of the main partner in the company, so it required a visual mark in addition to the logotype in order to communicate the type of business. Not that it was groundbreaking in any way, but the mark does its job well, without being too complicated — the more basic the shapes, the easier it is to recognize an image at a glance (important for property signage), and the better its reproduction at various high- and low-resolutions. The qualities of the mark that make it my favorite are similar to those of the SuperfluousBanter mark: a combination of symmetry and asymmetry that results in balance (it’s extremely important to have all three), and in this case, the end result was almost exactly what I pictured in my head before even sketching the first rough.

EJS: Can you name an all-time favourite (web-related) logo that someone else has designed? Why do you like it so much?

DR: It’s hard to decide, but I’ll go with Dan Cederholm’s Cork’d logo. I like Dan’s style in general, but the Cork’d logo is just elegant in its own little way (recurring theme: combination of symmetry and asymmetry resulting in an overall balance). I wear the t-shirt so much that I’ve almost worn it out ;)

EJS: What do you consider to be the current trends in web industry logo design? Are they good or bad?

DR: While there are still a lot of “web 2.0” design trends everywhere (not just online, either), in my experience these design trends result almost as much from client demand as from designers imposing those trends on their work. As I said before, I’m a fan of type-driven logos, with simple, straight-forward visual marks to support the type. Aside from the drop-shadows, bevels and other standard design clich