Logos.

I've been designing logos lately. I hate designing logos. Like, with a fiery passion. Logos for other people is even worse.
On the left you'll see the fun process I went through to carve out a Logo for the "John Blake" comic. Each one of these revisions had to be run past the publisher and further "tweaks" had to be made.
On the right you can see some of the logos i've made for myself over the years. I like big, iconic logos generally. The stronger the silhouette the stronger the logo, in my opinion, but that's a pretty uninformed opinion.
I wonder what it is that makes a good logo in the end? Obviously memorability, but how do you achieve that nowadays when we're bombarded with branding at all times? Also, the idea of riding alongside established branding has always confused me. "Apple white" is probably a good example of this. Slap enough translucency and reflections on your site icons and you can conjure up an image of crisp minimalism which is already established in the viewers mind thanks to other products.
It's all very psychological. I'm torn between wishing i'd studied graphic design, and being very glad I didn't.