Logo C&C - Piranhas

[Guest darkpiranha]

Hey. Finally decided to post my logo for all of your dreaded C&C. Some of you can be a bit unnecessarily harsh, but the vast majority of you have fantastic comments and suggestions.

My fantasy football team for the past 19 years has been the Dark Piranhas or just the Piranhas depending on my mood that year. I don't have a digital version of the very first logo I did back in 1988, but I have a copy of the second logo I did in the early 90's which is as follows:

The first version looked a little more like a real piranha, but for some reason when I did the second one, I wanted to go more for a stylized non-realistic version. I kept this design until last year when after finally acquiring Illustrator, I played around with it for a bit and came up with this, using a real piranha once again as my guide:

My team colors were black silver and white, but in 2006 I opted to add another color, a sort of blood red which resulted in this:

Two quick helmet ideas were these:

One of the elements that is consistent through all versions of the logo is the eye. Also somewhat consistent is the way the gills are presented as white highlights. Those are my nods to tradition and I just like the way they look. Because of the angularity of the eye, it sort of informed the rest of the hard angles I use in the logo.

Anyway, I look forward to all of your comments and criticisms and suggestions. In particular, a problem I'm having with the logo is that it doesn't play well over anything but a mid to dark tone. For example, the teeth get lost over white. I have been unsuccessful figuring out a way to outline the teeth or the rest of the logo to make usable over everything.

Also, I've played around with various wordmarks but have never liked anything I've come up with (most have used some sort of hard angle or pointy 'teeth-like' serif fonts)

Be firm, but gentle!

Thanks.

[Fyrwulf]

Actually, I think your stylized version is more like a real piranha than the non-stylized one. Having said that, I rather like this.

[Guest darkpiranha]

Actually, I think your stylized version is more like a real piranha than the non-stylized one. Having said that, I rather like this.

You mean the roundy one? The hard edged one was basically traced following the basic shape of an actual piranha.

[Guest darkpiranha]

Okay, I added an outline on the teeth and I think it looks okay. It will at least work over white as is.

Any suggestions?

[Guest darkpiranha]

Still looking for a little feedback on this logo. This is my first posted logo here, and I'm wondering what works and what doesn't.

Thanks.

[beansdooma]

Add silver and red shading, there's too much black.

[Guest darkpiranha]

Add silver and red shading, there's too much black.

I agree. I actually tried to put some red on the logo itself, but nothing I did seemed to work. I tried a red outline, red on the teeth. Maybe the gills could use some.

Where would you put some red and silver shading?

[andrewharrington]

I think using a strictly polygonal style is difficult in terms of creating a logo that's really well done both stylistically and compositionally. It's actually a fairly rare style, probably for that reason. You need to be really good to work in polygons, particularly when you're creating something animate, like a fish or wolf or something. It's a very native American style, and I don't know that it really fits the piranha as well as something else would, if you're trying to use cultural cues in your image. I generally associate the piranha with the Amazonian culture, and south American natives certainly used repeating geometric patterns, but I don't think the style of your fish quite matches the style of their artwork. I would probably start fresh, or really work the fish into a more distinct style, because it seems to me it's straddling styles, and a little bit of the wrong styles at that.

[Guest darkpiranha]

I think using a strictly polygonal style is difficult in terms of creating a logo that's really well done both stylistically and compositionally. It's actually a fairly rare style, probably for that reason. You need to be really good to work in polygons, particularly when you're creating something animate, like a fish or wolf or something. It's a very native American style, and I don't know that it really fits the piranha as well as something else would, if you're trying to use cultural cues in your image. I generally associate the piranha with the Amazonian culture, and south American natives certainly used repeating geometric patterns, but I don't think the style of your fish quite matches the style of their artwork. I would probably start fresh, or really work the fish into a more distinct style, because it seems to me it's straddling styles, and a little bit of the wrong styles at that.

You know, those are great points (of course you knew that!). By trade, I'm a film and video producer, with enough graphic design skills to give my commercials some pop. But by no means am I remotely as accomplished a graphic designer as many of you guys are here. I look at your logos (and yours in particular, Tempest) and marvel at the multiple levels of creativity and function of each logo.

As to the cultural associations of piranha, not once until you typed that up did I ever consider it. It just never occurred to me. And while it makes perfect sense, I don't know if I have any particular desire to match it up with a particular culture. An Aztek piranha would look pretty cool, but that's not me.

My main idea way back in the day when I first came up with this team identity was the teeth. My first logo was just a portion of the piranha's head, with all the teeth portrayed menacingly.

But if anything, I guess I had it in my mind that this would be a futuristic, or perhaps even mechanical or robotic piranha. Not literally robotic, but suggested, hence the sharp angles.

I've seen all the 'realistic' fish logos that have been done, with the jumping or twisting fish, and I knew I didn't want that.

Something else I experimented with, very dismally, was trying to take a bunch of tinier piranha and having the school of them form part of a logo. The main part of it has so many piranha bunched together that it's a solid shape, with the leading edge piranha breaking off so you can see the logo is actually made up of dozens of piranha. But as I said, that didn't work.

Anyway. Thanks for the comments. I'm going to start playing around with a new design now. Based on what I've just written if you have any new advice, I'd love to hear it.

[beansdooma]

Or you could just make the pirhana red with black outline.