Jeesh T, you're unrelenting ?
I've given this one a go a few times now but I can't seem to come up with anything that looks particularly metally. I might have some creative juices but I don't seem to have any metal juices. I'll give it one more go and see if I can come up with anything that might work but it'll probably only be towards the end of the weekend or early next week (I'm flying to Cape Town tonight so I can twitch a bird tomorrow morning so I can fly back tomorrow so I can be back in time for my brother in law's bachelors ?)
Now I know we've been over this a few times but humour me one more time. Let me just make sure I understand what it is that you want. You've pointed out the three designs (quoted above) that you like but how do you intend to use this design once it's done? The reason I'm asking is because it seems a bit at odds to me with your existing design of the thorny TK logo (which I think is pretty good and effective). You mention that you might or might not put the full name in a scroll underneath the TK logo but, to be honest, I can't see how a design like one of the three above would gel with the thorny TK logo, whether in a scroll or simply underneath. They're completely different visual styles. Even if you could get a design that's in the same visual style, I think it would be too much to have the thorny TK logo plus an elaborate full name design in one grouping.
My suggestion would be one of the following:
1. Stick with your thorny TK logo and, when you feel the need to display your full name, do it in a scroll under the logo (like the one example I posted) in an easily readable font.
2. Write the full name "Tamla Khan" out in some cool font and have your brother embellish it with the same style of thorny border. This way you can use either the TK logo or the full name, but not both. This would be a fairly difficult exercise though as I think it is vital that the two must be very obviously similarly designed, made from the same ingredients so to speak, so that an objective viewer can see one or the other and immediately make the mental link with "Tamla Khan". If the two don't look like they were made from the same ingredients, it will dilute your brand rather than bolster it.
Look at this image for instance. You don't even have to know the Cyrillic alphabet to instantly recognise this as Coca Cola.
One more comment, and I think someone have said this before; Try to keep it simple. Even if you have fancy thorns or spikes or whatevers, try to design a logo and a name that can be easily reproduced on different types of media. The temptation is always there to use all these great tools we have in Photoshop to produce something very psychedelic but in the end less is usually more. You can always take a simpler logo and fancy it up a bit to fit the visual style of the poster that is going on or the TV ad on which it will feature but if the logo is already elaborate with all sorts of colours and shading, it'll be very difficult to tone it down for simpler media like a paper pamphlet or metal dogtag on a neck chain.
So I would still recommend a basic black and white design. You can very easily switch the colours around if it goes onto a black poster or change the colours to black and red or white and green depending on the poster on which you want to put it. You can even add shadows or waxy borders if you want to feature it on a more accommodating media but in its essence, I think it needs to be a black and white design. Look at that page with all the metal logos for instance. Each one of them is simple black and white, no shading, no waxy soft edges, iconic. You could print any of those on a pamphlet or you could engrave any of those on metal dogtags or whisky hipflasks. Yet, if you look at the album covers further down the page, you can see how the simple designs have been given shiny finishes, drop shadows or different colours to make them fit in with the overall design of the album cover.
At the risk of sounding obnoxious, of all the suggestions posted so far, I still prefer my own:
deefstes wrote
You could consider something like this.
OK, wow, I'm rambling. I'll leave it there. Will try towards the end of the weekend to put something together and hope it works for you. In the mean while, don't you want to send me your brother's original design in the highest resolution that you have?
