Hot Sauce Logo

[trap843]

Hello everyone I am a freshman in college and our assignment for this week is to create our own hot sauce logo. Please give feedback on the name of the hot sauce and the pictures.

[Lith]

Welcome trap843!

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[KitchWitch]

Welcome to the forum, trip.

I deleted your duplicate post, in case you wonder where it's gone.

[skribe]

Humid? Why? The name would doom the sauce to failure IMO. Plus a cartoony logo like that would say, cheep watered down, hot sauce to me.

[Shniper]

I dont know a ton about graphic communications but i agree with skribe
The name just doesnt work. Humid? though its cliche things along the lines of fire would work better. Also using an adjective and getting rid of hot might work. Like inferno sauce for a quick example.
The first one works the best but the cartoon logo says dollar general store to me.

So basicly just fully agreeing with skribe here :3

[<b>]

Not the answer you wanted to hear, but like I've done before, I'm going to question the worth of the assignment. Why, you say? Glad you asked. Food products don't typically have logos. Instead, you'll see a label that's been designed with consistent branding and typography to make, say, the XXX Mild Hot Sauce match the XXX Medium Hot Sauce sitting on the shelf next to it. Most any logos you find on the packages will be for the company or brand that makes that particular item.

With that said, are you just designing a stand-alone logo, or are you designing a look or branding for a label? They're not the same thing. A stand-alone logo typically wouldn't be an elaborate illustration of the sort that you've sketched out, whereas a label might easily incorporate that kind of a look.

So heading on downstairs with my iPhone camera, I just happened to have a bottle of delicious Frog Ranch hot sauce sitting next to the pumpkin on our deck in the evening light (sorry about the reflection). As you can see, there's not a logo in sight, but there's plenty of branding — all the way from the memorable name to the lazy frog to the logotype that spells out Frog Ranch.

As an example, it's pretty good. It demonstrates the importance of a label, shows the differentiation between product branding by means of a label as opposed to a stand-alone logo, and it shows that a counter-intuitive name, like Frog Ranch or Humid, can work if it's memorable and tickles people's funnybones. Although, there's not anything particularly funny about sweat and humidity.



Of your three sketches, however, I'm probably thinking that the top one has the most possibilities — at least in terms of a quirky illustration. I'm not so sure that the map of South Carolina is going to ring much of a bell outside the state, so I'd be inclined to stay away from that one. The bottom sketch, I don't know, it could work if the illustration was great. But the idea of a sweaty-headed guy who appears to have just been goosed isn't exactly an award winner. And what's with the i in humid? It looks like a chimney belching out smoke. I'd skip that.

Think in terms of how this logo will be used, and one thing's for sure — it'll be used on the label of a bottle of hot sauce that needs to grab shoppers' attention. And it'll need to make a good first impression as they stroll down the supermarket aisles with their shopping carts.

[PanToshi]

Isn't that salsa? When I think of hot sauce I generally think of this.

[Buda]

Being from New Zealand, I think if this.



Which is similar to the Tabasco design now that I compare them.

[<b>]

Originally Posted by PanToshi

Isn't that salsa? When I think of hot sauce I generally think of this.

Yeah, probably right. Salsa pretty much means sauce in Spanish, so I tend to mix them up.

The Tobasco sauce example you gave is interesting in that it, unlike everything I said previously, is a product that really does have its own logo of sorts. But I'm not sure that the company that makes it, McIlhenny Co., sells anything but their Tobasco sauce, so the Tobasco logo/brand is synonymous with the company itself.

Interestingly, at least to me, as their Tabasco line of hot sauces has expanded, they've needed to alter their logo on the different labels to accommodate the differences between their sauces, like the image below. I don't know what they'd do if they decided to branch out into something else, like spaghetti sauce or bottled gravy or whatever. Brand extensions only work so far before they start diluting the original brand.

I guess my bottom line is that I think companies are usually better off with traditional logos, while their products are usually better served by branding that consists of recognizable packaging and labels, but not so much logos in the usual sense.

[Rachel B]

forgive me but none of these illustrations do it for me - rather I'd run in the other direction.
When I think of hot sauce I don't want to feel 'so hot I'm wilting' (definitely not appetizing) but fiery hot kablam! H O T sauce!