As I am often on forums, I am in need of an avatar. Since the logo I made is too wide to fit all in.
I started outusing the 'V' from the logo, added some gradients to it to take the plainness away, as well as being able to add multiple colours to it if it suits the enviroment it is in.
After that I add some decorative illustration around it. The whole thing is roughly squared and is made in all vector of course. I often keep the colour of the decoration the same silver, and instead change the colour of the 'V'. Reason for that is because the colour of the decoration fits with the font colour.