The first one, I like quite a lot. It is for an event management company called Mingle. The second I am trying to finalize with a client, a stoic librarian type who is very regal and is going into business as a personal organizer for corporate offices and private homes. They did not pay me to design these. They are paying me to put a website up for them, but they needed a logo. Since I don't want my site ruined with a shitty looking logo that they come up with, I just decided to spend a small amount of time making simple logos for them. Any feedback is appreciated, and please tell me which of the 7 Duke ones you like the best. (Personally, I like #7)
Meh I'd say 4, 7, 5, 2--with 4 & 7 being a tossup and quite a gap between 5 & 2. Yes, they're both very nice.
I like #5. Though I'd consider not isolating the D. Don't want it to read like uke Organizing cuz the missing letter would be filled with a P or an N well before a D.
I'd say 1 or 3. 2 looks like a learners L plate 4 looks like someone got bored and felt-tipped in the circle. 5's proportions on the D just don't look right, it seems sorta squished. 6 I'm not keen on the colour change, it's a failed uniformity 7 is better than 4, it gets rid of the problems in 4 + 6, Actually, screw the original answer, I say 7 or 3. The more I look at it, the more 'empty' 1 seems to be. I would swing to 7, because for some reason, 3 reminds me of macdonalds.
I like the Mingle. It's simple....and 'overdone' tends to be overdone these days, if you take my meaning. For the Duke logos, I like 4 and 7.
Thank you for all the feedback and complements/ I started designing the Mingle site too, and thought people would be curious enough about what it will look like, so here it is: (You can click it to make it full sized)
Oh, the watermarks are there until I buy the pictures. Those pictures can be costly, but it is better to buy them than being sued because you used one without permission.
Site looks good, but is it supposed to be a lesbian site? If so, then it's perfect as it. If not, there's a distinct lack of dudes in the photos. Not that I mind--quite the contrary--but it was something I noticed rather quickly. And if a straight guy notices the female:male ratio is overwhelming, think about what a het girl who is looking for guys would think....
Bah. You really can't go wrong with more women then men. Men's magazines? They have a hot woman on the cover. Women's magazines? They...have a hot woman on the cover.
Aw, man, seriously? No way. I have a dude and a girl on the bottom on a romantic dinner. I have a dude dancing with a few girls on the left, and a picture of a bride in a traditional white dress, which is hetrosexual. She did request a few pictures being changed though. One is the green party picture in the top right. And the other she has not decided on. She wants an older couple having a birthday party, and focus more on "all age groups." The biggest concern that I had with this design is the amount of drinking you see. I didn't want people to think the people running the site were alcoholics, though that was a problem before. :flow2:
Also, have you noticed that all apart from one of them is white? Or is that to make it non-threatening, or because it's hard to get a range of pictures in without making it look forced?
Okay, what I see, going from top left photo, clockwise: Photo 1 - 2 chicks drinking wine Photo 2 - 3 chicks, drinking Photo 3 - generic shot of a band, can't see any actual person's features Photo 4 - generic crowded bar shot, ditto Photo 5 - people dancing...7 chicks, 1 dude Photo 6 - BDay cake, no people Photo 7 - couple drinking wine Photo 8 - table setting/place cards Photo 9 - two women and a dude eating...sushi? Photo 10 - 5 people gambling, 2 dudes--one on each end--plus 3 chicks the photo is centered on. Photo 11 - Chick in wedding dress. So, out of 24 specific people in the photos, there are 5 dudes. And keep in mind that the eye is drawn to top left initially. 2 of the dudes are in the lower-right quadrant and none of them are in the upper left. FWIW. YMMV. P.S. - "TurdForge"???
Well, it IS Canada. Seriously, my first impulse was that he HAD gotten a nice mulitcultural feel. And looking at it again, you've got a black chick, an Asian, at least one sorta Hispanic lookin' one. I thought it was pretty good. There is a challenge to making that design work for the webpage. My first impulse was that it had a sorta "Brady Bunch" feel, and that the logo "pane" needed to be off-center. Or maybe varying the sizes of the "panes" would make it have less of a "bullseye" effect. But I digress. What I was going to say is, it's challenging to come up with pictures that hold together and feel unified while capturing a diverse feel. Yeah, it is overwhelmingly night shots of young people, drinking. But if you stick in one panel with older people (maybe the "anniversary dinner" picture bottom center), does it get distracting? Does that project a more inclusive feel or does it just make the viewer go "what's the deal with the geezers?" Do you throw in, say, little kids at an outdoor wedding to make it more "wholesome" or does that throw off the balance of the whole thing? I say if the customer likes it, leave it alone.
Well, a bit of an update on these two clients. First is that librarian from Duke. She's one of those people who listens to EVERYONE's opinions. And that makes it kinda hard to deal with, because even if 8 people like one version, the other two will comment on something they don't like, and she will wonder if the logo is any good. Which is EXACTLY what happened in the networking group we went to last week. So I had to talk to her later and tell her that she should try to make up her mind soon, and if it's something she herself likes, and most people say it's ok, she should just go with it. What ended up happening was she decided not to go with any of the above, and she just wants a simple plain text logo. I learned this is why I should not give logos away. If I had charged for this, I would at least have $50 for the 1/2 hour of design time. The problem: People don't want to pay for what they don't end up using. The second client, the cute Asian girl from Mingle, decided she DIDN'T like the look of the website. Even though most of her friends LOVED it, she said there were too many pictures in it, and she wanted something more traditional. This one I knew was a little bit risky, because she had sent me a ton of templates she liked off a template website. I told her that I REALLY didn't want to design something off a template, because, as I so succulently put it, it's all fun and games, till someone uses the same template. Then your website becomes a laughingstock. You guys might think it's rare that it happens, and to be honest, I think it is, but not as rare as you might think, because I've encountered a few times in the past that someone pointed out a company's website had the exact same look as another one's, even in the same industry. Result: Mingle's website gets a whole new redesign, and I am following the template. It's not often that I hit a home run, then have it rejected by the client, but such is life. And I am quite proud of the Mingle design, and will probably showcase it in my portfolio.
I like the mingle design too, but the photos do kinda crowd and distract from it. Maybe a tweaking is in order?
Completely out of rep, so I will have to remember to come back, but I the Mingle one -- it is excellent! Of the Duke ones, instinct says 7 too, but agree with Cobalt that some colour would be nice (if it doesn't go against their branding).
The librarian actually PRINTED out a copy of all seven logos and showed the entire group that day. So for the next 15 minutes, I had my work picked apart by regular people. This was kinda important, because if you show other designers, they will comment on it from a designer's viewpoint, which may not be the exact same as what the general public would think about it. Anyways, out of all the logos they saw, almost everyone picked #7 as well. I guess it kinda makes me relieved that I picked the one that the average non design person would like. The reason I like #7 is because the Duke in red make both words separated, and it doesn't blend into one like Dukeorganizing.
