A Band Logo Idea

[RBdestructor]

Hi, I was just wondering what people would think of this for a band whose name is 'Devils on Parade', as I have just got round to making up badges for the band, and was looking for a more informed opinion from the experts on here.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a35/RBdestructor/adjustedpambigramctropped.jpg

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a35/RBdestructor/badgenew.jpg

The background design was drawn using the application 'paint' in windows (a bit low-tech I know) and I drew the lettering with GIMP, although it could probably do with touching up.

I was hoping to get some feedback mostly on the legibility of the writing, as it is the first ambigrammatic thing I have designed and also some ideas about modifying the background image would be very much appreciated.

[Ben Kessler]

Definitely not legible.

[Craig B]

Ambigrams are definitely not easy. I was tryign to figure out what it said without reading it in your post and could never decipher it, so I think it might need some work.

Here are a few ambigram sites for inspiration: John Langdon's site (http://www.johnlangdon.net/angelsanddemons.html) and ambigram.com (http://www.ambigram.com/) which has an online ambigram generator, that isn't perfect, but could be a good starting point.

And the background, I assume, is for a CD? (maybe ...) if so, you need to leave room for your hole. It's not bad considering it as done in Paint (shudder) ... but if it's truly for a CD cover you'll need something that a vendor can print from (or more accurately "print well" from ...) I suppose you could export from Paint to something a vendor could print, but the quality will most likely suffer.

[morea]

^ what he said.

Also, a "logo" needs to be able to work at very small sizes (for printing on things like a business card or a pen) as well as large sizes. Considering that this is difficult to read at this size, I think that you will have even more trouble reading it if you scale it down to about 1".

A true logo needs to be designed in vector format as well (Illustrator or Corel Draw) to be scalable to different sizes. Logos should never be designed in Photoshop.

See this thread for more information:
http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41

[RBdestructor]

Ach well, maybe I can try and convince people that if they can't read it then they aren't cool, then everyone will pretend to be able to read it because they will be so desperate to fit in...

Okay maybe not, I'll probably redesign the ambigram at one point, and I will definately scale up the background somehow and use a different program if we use this on one of our CDs (this design is only for a set of small badges).

Much appreciate your criticism, just wondering which parts of the ambigram are the hardest to read - strangely it seems that everyone I have asked over the age of 30 can't read it no matter how hard they try, yet most people in my class at school can...

They must be trying to fit in I guess...

EDIT: Thanks for the vector thing, I was thinking about that the other day (I'm not exactly very knowledgable about this whole graphic design thing)

[morea]

we all start someplace. Glad to help some. ;)

Be sure to post the revisions, I'd love to see them. Ambigrams can be brutally hard, but really cool when they are executed just right.

This is one of my favorites:

http://i5.tinypic.com/4pmxque.jpg

[Craig B]

Once again, look at John langdon's site, he has some great examples of ambigrams that are very easily read. I probably could have read yours, if I had spent some time on it, but after about 5 seconds I gave up ... I know that sounds like a short amount of time, but for deciphering the text, 5 seconds should be more than enough.

They're not all perfect, but look especially at wordsmith, blacksmith, and Kelly Ripa under John's gallery. Clean and quickly read. For what it's worth, I think some of John's examples are also difficult to read.

So, I think it's a good start, it just needs some rethinking and tweaking. The connection with the line from the s and P to "on" were pretty distracting to me, because it made me want to see those letters as part of the others. Keeping it separate helps (IMO) to recognize it as a word break. Overall, the thin line work came across as unnecessary and distracting, but that was just me.

I think the lowercase "d" in parade could be an uppercase D and work better with the e shape ... but maybe not. I don't think you have to ditch everything and start over, just keep fine tuning it.

[budafist]

I congratulate your efforts to make an ambigram, but I wouldn't know what it said if I hadn't read the details and I'm cool.

You need to do some cleaning up of this and then you need to transfer it to a vector illustration. It's messy at the moment, some cleaned up lines would help it out.

[RBdestructor]

Thank you for taking the time to look at my design!

I think I may hold off revising this fully until I find some decent free vector-based software (if such a thing exists) but I will take your suggestions on board - getting rid of the fiddly detail and changing the d and e thing.

Thank you very much for your input and you can be sure I will come back when I have got a rough copy of a new ambigram. It will of course just be a scummy 'raster' image but you'll get the idea...

[Craig B]

There are some open source vector options. Check Inkscape (www.inkscape.org/) and maybe sK1 (http://sk1.sourceforge.net/?op=about). There's a list of others you can check out here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synfig).

[jessicam]

I always really struggle with ambigrams but I read this one right off. *And* I'm over 30. Huh.

Though it could easily be Devil Sun Parade.

[tZ]

I must say that allthough your letterforms have poor legibality that the typographic treament is very interesting and I think it fits the genre well.

With that said, I believe that if your were to push the legibility and make the ttypography readable you may arrive at both a fairly unique and sucessfull solution.

However, in its current condition the letterforms are illegible. I am able to make out out afew of them such as the d and e but, the rest I can not. I also find it intriquing that your using an instrument tied to a devil to treat the typography. It is a very unique way of modifying the typography and creating letterforms based on the promblem.

I think in time this could be highly successfull.

The CD design is another story but, workout the logo first then come back to the CD.

[CKBDesign]

uh... what?

[icekitty37]

woww those are some impossible to read logos. but they do look kick ass!