why I don't normally seek advice on artistic matters

You'll have noticed, over the course of this blog's existence, than one of my personality traits is a general decisiveness about most things, especially when it comes to matters of art and matters of prose. It's a rare day when I actively solicit advice about anything, which goes double for the matters just mentioned.* I do experience regret after having made certain decisions, but this doesn't happen often.

So putting up my design for reader review-- with the final version still a long way off-- was something of a rarity for me. The problem with soliciting opinions, especially about something as squishy and subjective as art (if I may dare to call the present logo "art"), is that the opinions one is likely to hear will represent a range of feelings and often-contradictory esthetic sensibilities. So far, for example, I've got people who hate the image I've created as well as people who seem to like it, and even those (thanks, Nathan) who say that certain elements of it are "growing on" them.

What to do with all these opinions?

As you might guess, I find the most attractive answer to be-- as is usually the case with me-- "ignore them," but the reason I put this image up in the first place is that, while I did have a clear idea of the "bootprint" concept, I too was wondering whether the image might be too busy. Not only that, but as a commenter pointed out, there are those who might-- wrongly-- see the bootprint as symbolizing my desire to walk all over these religions, to stamp them out and leave them clinging to my boots' soles like crushed beetles or chewing gum.

So when the initial complaints that my design was "too busy" came in-- and they came in fast-- I had my own suspicions about the image at least partially confirmed, which means I owe my readers a thank-you. While I think the design is sound at least in principle, it is indeed a bit too messy.

The obvious problem with going abstract is that I risk creating a symbol that's even harder to interpret correctly. We'll see what Round 2 brings, eh? More on this madness later.

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*Please don't confuse decisiveness (or independence of thought) with arrogance. While I may be arrogant in a whole host of ways, decisiveness isn't one of them.


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