Although most of my graphic design work has been for web use, there is the occasional job for company logos or even business card logos.

Here's a few logo designs that I've done and some stories behind them.

ThirstyBird

One of the first Logo designs I ever did was for a lighting company here in Los Angeles named Thirsty Bird, Inc. The owner of the company had wanted to change the logo he had been using for years and make it a little more modern.
We decided to break the Thirsty Bird down into very basic shapes and to have the disassociated parts come together to make the whole. (If you've ever seen some of his equipment, this idea makes a lot of sense)
We finally decided on using three frames of the entire animation to represent the final logo. Having more frames just seemed too busy. Although a One frame version is also used for putting on hats and such.
Lastly, to keep with the idea that this was a Hollywood lighting company, we decided to put the three frames into a strip of film and put the company name in place of where the film type information is usually put.
The result is as follows:

groovetree

Another logo design was for a recording studio in Mar Vista, California named Groovetree Recording. The company's owners were originally having their logo designed by someone else and I had just come on to develop their web site. I knew that their logo might be a long time in coming however and decided to take a crack at it in order to get the web site completed. My original idea was that of a tree with music notes hanging in place of leaves with name Groovetree under a branch coming off to the left.
Although I thought my first idea was a bit cartoonish, they did seem to like the concept. I wasn't completely happy with it however and went back to the drawing board. I liked the idea of the branch, but the tree just seemed too much. I decided to take the branch idea and incorporate it into a waveform that came off the t in Groovetree. I also sat down and created a stylized font for use in the name.
The final logo was near completion. The owners still felt that the t should be more tree-like. The idea of adding more waveforms to the t definately made it seem to busy. So, instead of branches, I decided to add a tree top which matched the stylized O shape of the g,o and e letters, but make it appear more transparent by making a series of vertical lines. This also made the shape possibly appear as a microphone, fitting in with the idea.
The final result was:

MVP DJs

My last example shows how I can take an existing idea and redo with a new look. MVP DJs had an existing web site and logo they were using. I came in just to spice up their web site a bit. The logo they had was already being used for their printed materials so we didn't want to stray too far from that idea.
Since the new website would be done with a black background instead of a white one, I decided to create something that would look good on black. I also wanted to use blue and white, which with black were the three main colors of the original logo and would be used in the new website, just in different proportions.
The Original logo and the New logo follow:

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