Hello,
Been lurking and finally posting up a piece i designed for a multimedia company.
The name is inspired by the highest category of Tornado, F5. I wanted to incorporate in tornado into the logo by making the F double as the symbol.
I feel it’s falling flat and it currently looks more like an abstract shape than an F. I was thinking of making the left side of the “F” connect to help visualize the letter better.
Feed back would be great.
The negative space between the F and the 5 is an eye snag. It’s also not obvious as either an F character or a tornado. It looks too much like an ocean wave or a tilde character.
Try moving the 5 into that negative space and making the 2 characters combined shape the tornado. Then try centering it above the word media, and make the word smaller in proportion.
If that doesn’t make it obvious enough, try doing something with the letter in the word media to make it look like the letters are being blown around the base of the twister. I’m not talking about scattering the letters. A simple cylindrical warp effect would do without making it too busy.
Before reading your post, I didn’t pick up on the F or the tornado. I’m not saying using a tornado as the F isn’t going to work, but this isn’t it. I’d be tempted to do a a really cool illustration of a tornado as an icon and then do something else for the type.
I picked up on the F.
The disconnect is not only in the negative space but the apparent “weight” of the F.
I’ve never been a fan of hard edged drop shadows used like that. In this case, with everything overlapping, it’s too busy.
Maybe try using the black as an extruded drop shadow instead, maybe even giving the red a black outline to give it more weight.
Note: by Extrude, I kinda sorta mean by hand. Illustrator’s extrude function can be a pile of crap if used straight up out of the box. To make a proper extruded letter, you have to copy the flat original, Do the extrusion using NO LIGHT so you get a solid shape, and even then use Expand and then use pathfinder to weld it flat. Then paste-in-place the original flat letters as a top layer. Don’t try to do it all in that awful algorithm.
If you are adding a black outline, do that to the flat letters first, then follow the rest of the steps.
I think your concept and general placement of the letters, words, and symbols (read: layout) are exciting and interesting. I also like the color scheme.
I agree that the spacing needs finesse, and the actual shapes used to create the tornado need to probably be reworked.
