My New Logo

[keith1]

What do you think of my new logo? Any suggestions/comments are appreciated. I really like the gradient background so I want to keep that and the font. My site will be going live soon.

[plantationfarmer]

ermm..
putting gradients on logos is a bad thing. erm..
it doesnt look profesional enough.that is if you want to use it to impress future clients.

[keith1]

I thought it was original, no one has cool gradients in their logos and sweet bevels like this on the font.

[morea]

hey keith, branding your company is one of the hardest things to do. We tend to be our own worst critics, I think!

A few things that you will want to keep in mind:

you will probably want to tone down the color a little bit... if you were to get the logo printed, the more color you use, the more expensive it will be to reproduce. Also, if you were to fax something with your logo on it, it would just come out as a black blob.

I think that you MIGHT want to reconsider the font you are using, because that one is overused. Also, if you are targeting "professional" (read: stuffy) clients, they may be turned off by the casual feel of your logo.

a logo should be effective even when scaled down to 1" x 1" for printing on business cards and whatnot. you probably want to avoid raster effects like the drop shadow, bevel, and glow on the text which can get mushy or pixellated when the image is resized. And make sure that you have a vector version of the logo so that it can be resized easily without losing resolution.

What do you want your logo to say to your clients? Have you thought much about what sort of clients you want to attract? And the overall look and feel of your website? That can make a big difference in your approach. It looks to me like you want your logo to say "fun" and "friendly", which are ideas that will appeal to people, but I think that you might want to try to boil it down to give it more visual impact and instant recognition.

I hope that helps some!

[keith1]

Thanks for the constructive critism morea. So back to the drawing board. I'll tone down the colors a little and add some sweet motion effects like turning into an animated gif. I really want to get peoples attention. I know my designs are good, I'm just not good with color. And the font is comic sans, it's my favorite font. It's casual and bold. It may be overused however that's what I believe makes it good. People love that font.

[morea]

^ it is a good point that while a lot of *designers* hate comic sans because it is so overused, a lot of more "normal" people (aka - clients!) love it!

Keep us in the loop with your updates! I'm eager to see what you do with it!

[keith1]

4 years of art school and no one told me comic sans is hated by designers. Go figure! I use it for everything. bodycopy/logos/captions. I can't get enough of it. Plus I'm addicted to gradients.

[DeleteYourself]

A few things to consider: Try to incorporate some symbolism, but keep it simple and unique. Find a font that stands out from the crowd, not blends in. Study well-known logos for ideas on what works. Try to stay away from Photoshop special effects, as they will not reproduce well, and frankly, just aren't necessary most of the time.

There was a good link somewhere to an archive list of major company logos.
Li'l help?

[plantationfarmer]

comic sans is like paris hilton.
a nice enough font but too much of it and it makes people sick.

[keith1]

I'm sorry I can't string you people on any longer. You guys are too dang nice! I made this because I read that "comic sans forum" so I thought I'd make a very ugly logo using it to see what kind of neg feedback I'd get, just for fun. Morea I thought you catch on first? I'm such a trickster!! hehehe

[morea]

I had a funny feeling you were up to something keith... but I tried to be helpful anyway! :p

^ it's good practice for when my client brings me the same thing later on today and asks me what I think of it! lol

[3howards]

i knew you were joking, there was no way i could take that seriously. especially when comic sans and gradients are being discussed.

[plantationfarmer]

its not ugly. its not nice eh. =)

[morea]

by the way, you need to add a "swoosh"! :D

[defjoe]

I was going to say "this is a gag... who is this Magnus?"

[keith1]

I have a friend or an acquaintance rather that's trying to get into web design and does extremely bad web graphics and I don't know how to tell him. I told him on other projects, less is more, simple is better, too many colors = not good. He's going crazy with those photoshop filters and thinks it looks good. That logo I posted was probably better than his. Check it out www.detroitflavor.com and http://www.nativekreations.com/

[EC]

ouch, my eyes!

[keith1]

Told ya

[Crimson]

I thought your logo went well with your avitar.

Crimson

[keith1]

Thanks crimson. We should start a thread in the off topic section to see who can design the ugliest logo using comic sans.

[morea]

Now *that* is a contest we could all enjoy. :p

[DeleteYourself]

d'oh! got me.

[Eraser Nubbin]

What about something really challenging, see who could make a good logo using comic sans.

[DeleteYourself]

woah. you're gettin' a little crazy there eraser. lol. don't know if that even CAN be done.

[keith1]

I'm down. And to make it even harder, it'll have to be a corporate logo of a computer company. How about IBM? Let's say they have to redesign their logo and the only font they can use is comic sans for some weird legal clause the designer added in the original contract. The contract stated that they can use their current design for so & so amount of years and after the expiration date which is in a week from now they have to use comic sans for 5 years then they can start over.

[keith1]

I'll start it in the General thread.

[CicatrizESP]

haha

pure genious keith. After you said 4 years of art school i was like wtf.

[Ryan8720]

That friend of yours isn't exactly good at the coding side of things either. I think he needs to rethink his career.

[style]

when i started reading this thread, i thought it was a set up and was gonna politly ask keith if he was kidding around... then he went and blew his cover! """""fab logo!!!"""""

[keith1]

sure you did ;)

[danedawg99]

when i started reading this thread, i thought it was a set up and was gonna politly ask keith if he was kidding around... then he went and blew his cover! """""fab logo!!!"""""
I did the same. But I'd seen Keith's work before this and knew he had to be joking.