A few of my colleagues at UIC and a few of their colleagues from institutions around the world are all working on social media privacy. They put together a group called the Social Media Privacy Research Collective and wanted to solidify their efforts with a logo. Being the resident artist of our department, I was tapped to do the design. I immediately started playing with the initials.
At first I messed around with the P and the R. I knew there was something I could manipulate there. I thought it was goign to be flipping the P, then I thought it was going to be integrating their similarities. Flipping the R ended up being the way to go.
Then I started to see the similarities between the P-R combination and the M.
Once I got that, which took a few more iterations, the S and the C fell into place, and I had it. Then I moved to the computer to render it cleanly.
I ran this design by my colleagues, and they wanted it done up with some color.
Though it may go no further than this, I am thankful to Kelly Quinn and Dima Epstein for the opportunity to stretch a bit on this one.
UPDATE: This is another version I did later, and the one I think they ultimately ran with. I know they liked it better regardless.