MageTools Logo

Site: https://mage.tools

MageTools is a Chrome extension, so its icon lives in your toolbar and you have to stare at it every day. Because of this, I wanted to keep the logo simple and unobtrusive. Chrome has customizable themes, so I knew that from the start, I wanted to stick with a white and black color palette that would go with any color scheme.

A "Mage" is a magician, so I looked at how magic has been represented across culture – from history to books to video games – and landed on a few different concepts. Mainly, magic tends to be visualized with a lot of geometric shapes. Because the toolbar icon had to live in a small space – around 20x20 pixels – I decided to keep it simple and symmetrical.

Finally, magic has a certain flair to it. The movies and games from my childhood always presented it as this mysterious, otherworldly thing, so I wanted to make the logo reflect this. I decided it should fade into the middle like some kind of arcane vortex. To me, it feels interactive – like you could touch it or hold it or walk through it.

Here's the finished result!