I don't know how to improve this logo design

My design declined by designcrowd just today for poor design / execution.

The client wanted a cute, playful, modern, personable, colorful, upmarket, elegant design. The target market is gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas. The client also wanted a cute name for his/her teddy bear business. So I came up with the name Teddy Hugsy. I tried rigidly to adhere to designcrowd quality standards and was really optimistic about getting approved. Please be kind to point out the mistakes in design, color, typography, execution. This is really important to me. Thank you all.

I read @sprout reply and it’s a very good, honest critique.

I say this with great gusto - don’t use crowdsourcing sites. They are a curse and an abomination. You won’t learn anything, it’s not the experience you should have in dealing with clients.

$50 for a logo? Yeh sure, that’s possible if I just type out a word in a nice font and they like it.

I once designed a logo for a banking corporation. I went to to the meeting - I sat with the Board members, I listened to them describe their Bank, what they do and what level of trust they wanted with the logo and how important it was to have that logo right and incorporate all their values.

In the a lightbulb moment, I sketched out the logo on my notepad - held it up and said - ‘something like this’ - and they said ‘THAT’s IT!’

I went back - spent 2 weeks polishing the design - setting up it’s guidelines and going back and forth.

My bill at the end was $5000. They were flabbergasted and said “but you came up with the logo during the meeting, surely it’s cheaper than that”.

Yes, I came up with the logo in seconds, but I spent 25 years perfecting thoughts on design. Yes, it took seconds. But I spent 80 hours on perfecting the logo, and coming up with usage and guidelines around it so the logo is maintained and the brand is protected and shown correctly in all usage.

Dump crowdsourcing sites. Useless garbage way to try to get work. Trying to WIN a contest to get a measly few quid. What a waste of time.

Get a free month here
https://www.lynda.com/Logo-Design-training-tutorials/1329-0.html

Keep going - you can do it - but don’t go to crowdsourcing sites.

3 Likes

Just forgot to mention, the font is Kalleco.

It definitely misses the mark in terms of up-market elegance, both in name and execution. Those requirements are a tall order for a experienced designer, in terms of hitting the right tone of voice. upmarket, elegant, but cutesy and playful is quite the balancing act. For someone engaged in crowdsourcing, it is a nigh-on-impossible task.

The hugely ridiculous thing about this is, here you have a company that seemingly knows their target market with some degree of accuracy, yet they are prepared to only value this very exacting communication to a $50 logo on a crowdsourcing site. As PrintDriver says, they deserve all they get.

That they even leave naming of the company to a crap-shoot beggars belief.

Wannabe designers resorting to crowdsource sites, is like watching lemmings going over the cliff. I suppose it sorts out the wheat from the chaff. However, the big issue is it lowers expectations on both sides.

If you want to know how to fix your logo. Learn how to design logos and brand identities from the best, rather than from the lowest common denominator.

Sorry, if that sounds harsh, but we are asked day after day to critique the uncritiquable. How can you possibly say whether a logo is successful without context. Logos are the mnemonic for brands and (should) derive from conversations and relationships with clients and an understanding of ethos, goals, aspirations, etc. They definitely do not derive from a list of adjectives and the price of a few coffees.

2 Likes

Arrrgggghhhh.

I think the question here is, were the designs “declined by” the service?
Or did they just not win the contest, as in declined by the person requesting a logo?

I have yet to see a crowdsource site adjudicate the entries posted as responses to a design brief. But as to contest winners? There can be only one.
And therein lies the folly of these contest things.

I’ve merged NewNewbie’s duplicate posts and their replies into this single topic. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to reorder the replies into the correct chronological sequence, so several of the replies are out of order.

This is a good time for a reminder not to create duplicate posts or topics.

I’m hesitant to call crowdsourcing contest organizers clients. For me, a client is someone with whom I have a contract. Prior to that, they’re just potential clients.

As already mentioned, these contest sites are not good ways to do business or make money. Creating work with no assurance of getting paid seems a bit foolish — especially when the possible return on the investment is so small.

I’m writing from a North American perspective, however. Your IP address points to Bangladesh, so the relative value of the money between our two locations needs to be considered. What isn’t a viable way to earn a living here, isn’t necessarily the case in other countries.

Why your work wasn’t chosen likely has something to do with the ignorant whims of the person choosing the winner. You had no chance to explore the business needs of this person and develop a logo tailored to meeting those needs. That person likely had no basis for choosing an appropriate design other than his or her personal tastes. It’s a dysfunctional relationship that can’t be expected to produce good results, so there’s little to be gained by analyzing it too deeply or drawing any conclusions about what went wrong.

You drew a cute little illustration, which is sort of cool. The typeface you chose is a nice match with the illustration. However, the overall effect suggests infants and toddlers. Given the contest organizer’s wishes for “upmarket” and “elegant,” that might not be the right look. Again, though, you had no chance to explore that or other issues with this person.

Why did you place a single dark red heart next to the teddy bear’s head? It comes across as an oddity that doesn’t integrate with the rest of the design. Speaking of hearts, is that a heart above the e in Teddy? If so, why is it the same color as the e? For that matter, why is it there at all? It looks like a diacritic mark. In Czech, the ě grapheme is part of the written language, which I assume wasn’t meant to be the case here.

2 Likes

I agree. The hearts are definitely redundant and make the logo busier than it should be.

I totally couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of upmarket, elegant coupled with cute and playful. I thought ‘logos should be simple’, so I made it cute, playful and that’s it!

Also, who gives teddy bears to adults as gifts in their anniversaries!!

Declined by the service.

Did they elaborate on what was poor about the execution?

Negative feedback without providing a reason is garbage, it shows laziness on the part of whomever’s providing the feedback.

It sounds ludacris that you would have to concieve and pitch a name and design to client with no gaurentee of payment. You need to find better clients and I would highly recomend you check out Creativeboosts podcast with Blair Enns: https://creative-boost.com/power-positioning-pricing/#more-1491

As for the critique:

It looks very cute to me, I think the teddybear mark you’ve come up with is actually pretty well done.

Although it feels like there’s a lot going on.

Something also feels funny about the relationship between the text and the mark.

If it were me, there’s a couple of things I would fix:

  • Make the bear mark the hero and get rid of the two hearts, you don’t need to say everything in one mark or try to do too much, the best logos are super simple.
  • The reason why I think the text and mark don’t relate well is because of extra colors on the bear mark. The black has a lot of visual weight and so does the grey bow, while the the type has neither of these. Would recommend simplifying the colours down, personally I would go for 2 colours max or 1 if possible.

Other things I would explore would be another configuration of the text, maybe stacked on top of of each other, and maybe even all lowercase, with the bear mark out to the side?

Regarding your kerning, it’s not too bad, there does seem to be a little too much space between the “T” and the “e”, but everything else seems fairly consistent.

Hope this is helpful, I think your design is worth way more than $50.00! :beers: :call_me_hand:

1 Like

Well, that has to be a first. Usually you pay your entry fee, the “client” pays their entry fee and the website sits back and counts their money. They usually don’t care that much to actually vet the “talent.”