Developing a Logo Personally...

Early in September 2009 I decided that I wanted to design a brand Identity for myself as a designer. In the beginning I kind of designed in a vacuum, I didn't do sketches and I didn't do any research online or in books. Very quickly I realized I was doing something wrong. So I talked to classmates and instructors about how I should go about this process. Everyone that I Talked to said, "Sketch it out." or "Go look at some logo books/websites and get some ideas."

Here is a couple coherent early pages from my sketchbook:

At first I was a little apprehensive towards the idea of looking at other logos and jeopardizing my chances of developing something original. Then I realized almost nothing is original anymore, Everything is just a mish mash of everything. So over the course of about 8 months any free time I found myself with I was sketching out logos and looking for new ideas in logo books and design websites. There was alot of flops and frustration, but in the end I found a couple ideas from a collection of all my resources and molded them together to create my current logo.

Here is a taste of what could have been:

Here is the idea that survived:

Thanks to everyone who gave me advice/critiques.