Design a unique and elegant logo for Colleen M Griffith Photography & Video

Colleen M Griffith

I am a full-service and versatile professional photographer providing photographs and video for individuals, events, organizations, and corporations across a wide variety of industries and including both personal and commercial markets. I use video to tell personal stories (such as capturing individual team’s performance during canine scent-detection competitions), provide education, and to market corporation’s products and services. I provide photography services in the areas of corporate head shots, events (weddings, engagements, sports, corporate events, etc), individual and family photo shoots, pets, culinary, fine art, real estate, photo restoration, etc. I am located in Maryland, USA and my customer base is located in the North-East region of the USA (the states of Maryland, Washington DC, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, etc). And a large portion of my customers are caucasian middle-class women who were born and raised in the USA, so the logo will need to appeal to them as well as to those in US corporations who make buying decisions (again, mostly US born caucasians although there is more cultural diversity in this market). I would like the final design to be elegant and obviously unique, with special consideration given to unique works of art (see the first two logos as examples in my logo example website link in the references section of the Design Brief).

Here is a link to a gallery I created with about 9 logos that I like (UPDATE – as of August 29, 10AM USA East Coast time (EDT), I have updated this gallery with more logo examples as well as more feedback and direction: http://www.colleenmgriffith.com/Gal…/n-SdWbRm/ . Below each logo I’ve explained what I like about it. Many of the designs in this gallery are different than the examples that are shown in the Visual Style section of this design brief, so you'll want to look at both places.

Regarding general comments:
- I DO NOT WANT AN IMAGE OF A CAMERA OR ANY OTHER ASPECT OF A CAMERA (like a lens or aperture, etc) INCORPORATED IN THE LOGO.
- I would like to have the words “Photography” AND “Video” (or some other version or combination of those words or another word that conveys that I do both photography and video) incorporated in SOME of the final logo designs (and I’d like to see some logo designs without them as well). If you're going to include the word "Photography", then you must also include the word "Video" as well.
- I do NOT want only my name, in cursive writing for example, as the logo by itself.
- The logo should convey professional and high quality products and services. The logo should be sophisticated, easy to read, and elegant. The feelings and messages I want the visual design to communicate to my viewer include elegant, unforgettable, personalized, high quality, premium, timeless, mature, sophisticated, and should be slightly geared more toward the feminine side (but not too feminine and not too masculine).
- Because my target audience is so broad, and my services are so versitle, the logo must appeal equally to both genders and a wide variety of industries.
- I tend to prefer curvature and flowing lines as opposed to sharp corners and right angles, so I would tend to choose a circlular shape over a square or diamond shape (square rotated 45 degrees) with all else being equal. However, as you can see, I included a square shape in my example logos that I really like, so a square shape may still win the final contest.
- I do NOT want my logo to look like every other photographer's logo that's out there either -> I'm looking for something unique (which is one of the reasons why I don't want an image of a camera, or camera parts, to be used in the logo).
- And if you decide to use my initials in the logo design, I do have a slight preference to have all three initials "CMG" included; however, I will happily also consider other combinations of some of my letters (like "CG" or "C") depending on how the design looks. If you come up with something amazing that is only a "C" or a "CG", I will choose that over something that's average looking but includes all three initials.
- Preference is for something beautiful, elegant, original, and ideally something that looks like original art, like the first 4 logo designs shown in the link of logo designs I uploaded to my webpage (scroll up to find the link to my webpage). I don’t want anything very abstract.
- In terms of file types, I would like the final logo to be delivered in AI and EPS formats (if you’re using Adobe Illustrator) and PDF (if you’re using Photoshop) as well as PNG and JPG.
- I will be using the logo as a watermark placed over all my photographs as well as my video, so if it’s a very large logo (that takes up a lot of space) it would be good to have a streamlined version that also can fit well into tight spaces. I will be using it on my website, and printing it on business cards, print marketing materials, and embroidering it onto clothing, jackets, bags, etc (so if it’s a design that won’t transfer well to embroidery, then if you’re design is chose, I would also like a version of it that will embroider well too).