Food Blogger Needs a Logo!

Macheesmo

For the last two years I've been using basically the same design for a food blog I run called Macheesmo. I'm ready to upgrade it to something a bit cleaner and more professional looking.

The focus of my blog, http://www.macheesmo.com, is on the food, recipes, and photos. Any design should start with that in mind. I also encourage people to try new things in the kitchen and not be scared of failing... The tagline I try to incorporate into things is "Cook Something". Depending on the design I might change this, but it works for now.

I'd also be interested in an ongoing relationship hopefully with the winning designer. I'm planning on redoing the entire layout of the site based around the winning logo design.

If you have specific questions, please ask! I plan to be very active adminning this contest over the next 10 days or so.

My audience is a pretty wide range of individuals. I think I have a slightly higher female readership probably just due to the subject. In general though, my readers like the food and recipes and like that I try to keep cooking light-hearted and fun.

The only real requirement is a clean, simple text logo with the word Macheesmo and bonus points if you can integrate the tagline "Cook Something". A simple, clean text logo with a few fun elements or small touches would be awesome.

I would like the logo to be very brandable meaning that it has a distinct look and could be copied over on many other sites. For example, it would be cool to have a "Macheesmo" logo, but then be able to make a smaller M square logo that I could use for Twitter/favicon/etc.

I'm sick of the white/black layout on Macheesmo now. The site could use some colors and the logo is a good place to start on that I think.
I really like deep, rich colors. Nothing pastel. I'm really open to ideas on color schemes.

The design should be light-hearted. I'm trying to have fun with cooking and encourage people to do the same. I don't need anything elegant. That said, I don't want cartoons or anything too childish.

I like the idea of having some portion of the logo be changeable depending on the month. This isn't essential but it'd be cool. It could be something small...

Some sites I like just for their logos:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com
http://smittenkitchen.com (would like a bit more color than this, but nice and clean look)
http://www.foodloveswriting.com (like the kind of graffiti/chalk look)

For deliverables, I'd like .AI, .PSD, and a .JPG.