Which logo is best?

[haiggy]

Didn't you read #9 of the Ten Commandments?:

http://www.yourlogomakesmebarf.com/2009/03/the-ten-commandments-of-barfy-logos/

Apparently neither did your company!

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

Didn't you read #9 of the Ten Commandments?:

http://www.yourlogomakesmebarf.com/2009/03/the-ten-commandments-of-barfy-logos/

Apparently neither did your company!

I wish I had the skill level of whomever designed this.

 

[arkitect]

I wish I had the skill level of whomever designed this.

That rising (or is it setting?) sun looks soooo angry.

And as for the canoe flying over water… what can I say? We're obviously dealing with a master designer here.

 

[Anuba]

That rising (or is it setting?) sun looks soooo angry.

Not as angry as this one:

I always thought that baby looks evil. Had I been 5 years old or so, I'd be paralyzed with fear of the Teletubbies sun baby possibly lurking under my bed and ready to slash my Achilles tendons like in Pet Sematary.

 

[emdotdee]

Thanks for the opinions everyone, I've not been able to try all the different suggestions because I haven't got the skills/patience with illustrator.

I must add that I work in a small department for Home Retail Group (who own Argos) and this logo is just to give our office a bit more presence in the building because we tend to get ignored, so customers wouldn't be seeing this at all.

I was asked if I could put "Card Registrations" inside the card graphic but I just kind of ignored that idea because I knew it would look cluttered, I may just put that underneath if they really want it in there.

I wasn't too happy with those colours either, they didn't look strong enough. I'll have another play with it later.

 

[Anuba]

I was asked if I could put "Card Registrations" inside the card graphic but I just kind of ignored that idea because I knew it would look cluttered, I may just put that underneath if they really want it in there.

Yeah, requests like that are the bane of every graphic designer.

You make a navigation pane for a website and build it around a certain word length, and get a nice tidy row of buttons like...

HOME
STUFF
THINGS
LOGIN
ABOUT

Then Joe Contactperson looks at it, has 20 different meetings with 20 different department bosses, consultants and project leaders, calls you back and says "Looks great! Just one small change though. We would like the buttons to read..."

HOME
STUFF
THINGS
LOGIN
ABOUT THE COMPANY AND ITS HISTORY AND SOME OTHER INFO AND SUCH

And you go, "well, I think we have to be fairly consistent, not to mention concise, with the wording in the navigation pane. Your suggestion here is going to make the navigation pane go from 80 pixels to 800 pixels wide, leaving only a tiny peephole for the actual content."

"But can't you make the text smaller?"

"Sure, I can resize the text on this one button, to the point where it's not so much text but a single row of dots, 1x1 pixels in size."

"Can't you make the button bigger then?"

"Why of course, I'll have 4 buttons of equal size and then a 5th button that's the size of a football field. Or, you could just trust the website visitors to deduce that 'About' means 'About the Company' on a corporate page.

"Hmmm... no, we'd really like it to say 'About the company and its history and other info and such', though. We have no idea why, and we used absolutely no logic or reason in coming to this decision, we just have this uncontrollable urge to have it this way. You *are* a professional designer, right? So you figure it out."

 

[emdotdee]

Gah, how can I edit the R in illustrator?

At the moment I've just made a stroke and carefully placed it underneath the R to make it look rounded but obviously when I add a stroke to the text the rounded bit isn't included.

Can I convert the text to something that will allow me to add the rounded bit ??

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

Gah, how can I edit the R in illustrator?

At the moment I've just made a stroke and carefully placed it underneath the R to make it look rounded but obviously when I add a stroke to the text the rounded bit isn't included.

Can I convert the text to something that will allow me to add the rounded bit ??

Convert the "R" to outlines (shift+command+O) then select both it and the rounded part and use the "Add to shape area" button in the Pathfinder palette (and you might need to click the "Expand" button, but probably not).

It will then be one object and you can...uh...stroke it to your heart's content.

 

[emdotdee]

They really like this version


Thanks IgnatiusTheKing, I bodged the curved R bit together before you replied but I'll go back to it and do it the proper way now.

 

[Anuba]

They really like this version


Thanks IgnatiusTheKing, I bodged the curved R bit together before you replied but I'll go back to it and do it the proper way now.

That's pretty good. One minor thing though, I think the E in SAFE is a little too close to the card. Also, you might wanna have another look at the kerning. I'll exaggerate the distances here to illustrate my point...

S A F E
R E C EI PT

There's barely any gap between the P and T in RECEIPT, a slightly smaller gap between the E and I than the I and P.

Here's what I would do:

- Move "SAFE" slightly to the left, and the "AFE" yet again a little bit to the left to narrow the gap between the S and the A (with an S before an A you should trust optical perception rather than math). This should put SAFE at an eye-pleasing distance from the card.

- Move the T slightly to the right, and then space the "ECEIP" letters evenly between the R and the T.

Something like this:

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

They really like this version


Thanks IgnatiusTheKing, I bodged the curved R bit together before you replied but I'll go back to it and do it the proper way now.

No problem.

I'm not sure about the cyan stroke. It makes the whole thing a little hard to look at, in my opinion. What about making the words and the card the same color?

 

[decksnap]

not to nitpick, but you don't want to kern more space between the p and the t, because optically you could drive a truck through it already. It's really just an issue around and within the 'ece'.

Not a fan on the blue outline on the type.

 

[Anuba]

not to nitpick, but you don't want to kern more space between the p and the t, because optically you could drive a truck through it already.

Not a fan on the blue outline on the type.

Well, you can always drive a truck through PT or TT when it's a sans font, especially one this wide, but that doesn't give you license to push the P so close to the T they're almost touching at the top. With a serif T it's another story.

Word on the stroke outline... a stroke needs some measure of contrast, this one could be mistaken for blurred edges.

 

[creator2456]

The stroke on the letters needs to go. Also, I had a hard time realizing the rectangle was supposed to be a credit card (or the like). Maybe try a solid color instead of two lines for both on the card and the swoosh.

 

[emdotdee]

Now I'm being told that I have to have the Home Retail Group logo in there.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

Now I'm being told that I have to have the Home Retail Group logo in there.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

You've got space in the card. It may not be ideal, but if the logo isn't hideous it won't detract too much from what you've got already.

 

[emdotdee]

Not as awful as I first thought it would be.

Changed the colour to match the Home Retail Group logo.

 

[kymac]

hmmm the illustrative and photographic elements clash pretty hard here now.. i would def stop outlining though.. not unifying and unnecessary..

 

[brasseale]

Blunt critique

Please stop outlining. There's a reason you don't see logos have outlines like yours has. It is turning your mediocre logo into an abomination in the eyes of designers.

The 'swoosh' is slightly reminiscent of your parent company's logo but only insofar that is is a swoosh. It lacks interest because it is just a curved line placed under some words. The strokes are all the same, and the caps are all curved. Completely uninteresting.

My suggestion is to kill the swoosh, find more interesting typography and make the credit card's stroke have at least some variation. Don't just randomly pair colors together. Head over to http://www.colourlovers.com and find a palette that will complement your company and parent company. Also check out some tutorials on vector graphics at http://vector.tutsplus.com/ .

If you want a solid critique on this as a logo head over to http://forum.freelanceswitch.com/ and post there. They will give you much more insightful feedback than a rumor mill forum can.

 

[faustfire]

I agree, the stroke has to go.

 

[decksnap]

I doubt this is the relationship they were looking for. Did you TILT the retail group logo? That's usually a no-no.

In this setup, the retail group logo will be illegible at a small size. Separate it from inside the logo but find a way to group the two.

Alternately, do you have the type setting for just the words on the box? Would they let you use that instead of the actual whole box logo?

 

[IgnatiusTheKing]

I doubt this is the relationship they were looking for. Did you TILT the retail group logo? That's usually a no-no.

In this setup, the retail group logo will be illegible at a small size. Separate it from inside the logo but find a way to group the two.

Alternately, do you have the type setting for just the words on the box? Would they let you use that instead of the actual whole box logo?

Ditto all that. There's got to be a graphic/type logo, rather than just an image...right? You really do need to drop the stroke on the "SAFE RECEIPT" text; it's just not necessary.

 

[emdotdee]

Ok, I had a bit of a re-think and came up with this....

This is no way a final one, just getting the idea down.
The colours aren't final, just there so I knew where i was clicking when close up.

Am I going in the right direction?

 

[diemos]

#3 for sure.

 

[decksnap]

Am I going in the right direction?

I don't think so. The gradient is out of place and loses the continuity you almost had in the initial version. I like the lines on the card breaking off the edge to imply motion, but wouldn't they be breaking off the opposite side if that's what you're insinuating?

And what happened to the parent logo you had to integrate?