Logo Design

http://www.artschools.com/articles/graphic-design/

you don't need a company name. just use your own full name. from experience, using your own name is the most professional, clean way for a photographer to promote themselves. however, i do have a photographer friend whose name is Essex and he calls his business S6 Photo, i think it's pretty cool.

Another thing you can do is use a name without 'photography' on the end. there was a thread about this for video a little while ago, and i think it's good for all filmers/photographers to keep this in mind. it's hard to explain exactly what i mean, but if you really don't want to call your company by your own name, then don't call it "______ photography." Try to think of a name that can stand alone, just "________." It's like DownToFilm here on NS. He has a name for his company, but if he were to call himself "DownToFilm Productions," it would sound way worse. Just DownToFilm sounds more clean and makes the name stand out. By adding photography, productions, films, etc to the end of your name, it makes it harder for you to stand out. It's still very possible, but it just makes it that much harder.

If you're doing quality work it's not a huge issue (there are a couple crews ending in 'media' and 'productions' on NS that still stand out in my mind), but it's just something to keep in mind.

Thanks a ton man. That's exactly the help I was looking for. I definitely know what you mean about using films/photography/productions at the end, it's just not original and it's just way overused and not memorable. I'm just thinking, my name is Ian Araujo which isn't too bad but my last name is kinda hard to pronounce, so I might take a little time and see if I can think of a more "clever" type of name like "downtofilm" did. I like that clean sound in a name also that can stand alone and you could put on a sticker or something and it would look good. Thanks again I'll see what I can come up with, and if I can't come up with anything I'll just use my full name like you suggested because that will always sound good and stand alone well.

Having a last name that's hard to spell and pronounce will only help you be memorable, haha. It does make it a little harder, but it will definitely be recognizable in a stack of business cards.

WIll's advice was really sound.

As for what program to use, industry standard is Illustrator, don't use photoshop. Illustrator logos can be scaled to any size you want, and are more precise and easily changed as the rendering of the artwork is based on crazy math equations and not just a series of different colored pixels.

Haha ya I never thought of it that way for my last name! That is true though that it will look better on a stack of business cards. Ya I can definitely use illustrator and since I've only used photoshop and after effects I'll watch a few tutorials online so I can get the hang of it and come up with a creative logo that'll look good on a stack of business cards or sticker.

Not that it's that important but my thought was: if I get stickers and take pictures of random kids at a skatepark or something I can give them each a sticker and be like "if you put this on your board or something I can give you a few free pictures to use on facebook" (with my watermark on them that will also be my logo once I design it). Then they put the pictures on facebook and there's some free advertising. Plus i'll have fun with it and they'll get sweet pictures. I didn't think this through too well so I'm sure that it won't work out how I hope but at the moment it seems like a good idea to me! haha