New Personal Logo

[Bmac]

A while back, I created a personal logo. I used it all over the place, most noticably on my concepts template and for a while as my avatar. I decided to update it, without changing the basic idea. I wanted to make it look a little neater, more professional.

Here is my new logo:

And here is a comparison of my original logo and the new one:

[elliott]

It's still really...generic. What is that, Agency and some stock font? And, I don't know, it's kinda boring, I know you can give this a little life and be more creative, do something cool with interlocking letters or try to play off of the number 25, 25 is a pretty symmetrical number, after all it's the same if you flip it 180 degrees, and maybe you could work the 2 and 5 into a B. You don't have to have all 6 characters, that's somewhat hard to form into an effective logo. I hope that gives you a little inspiration but I just know you can come up with something better.

[thebigeh]

It's still really...generic. What is that, Agency and some stock font? And, I don't know, it's kinda boring, I know you can give this a little life and be more creative, do something cool with interlocking letters or try to play off of the number 25, 25 is a pretty symmetrical number, after all it's the same if you flip it 180 degrees, and maybe you could work the 2 and 5 into a B. You don't have to have all 6 characters, that's somewhat hard to form into an effective logo. I hope that gives you a little inspiration but I just know you can come up with something better.

Better than your previous personal logo, IMO.

[Kit]

It's an improvement, for sure, but there are still elements that I'd say need work:

1. The very thin strokes on the letters and numbers are both awkward and illegible at small reproduction sizes. You should try to have very few distinct line weights in any identity job; normally you'd have one stroke weight and use areas of colour/shape to replace other strokes; I'd consider the necessity of the strokes entirely on the letters, and increase the white stroke on the 25 to the same one separating the outer ring and the inner circle.

2. The font selection is vastly improved but says a lot more about you than you think. Agency is often used as a crutch (especially in its default condensed width). Your application here is very peculiar; why a condensed font on a slope? You're letterspacing characters that were designed to be tracked tightly. The 25 in the background isn't a bad choice as an evolution of your former logo, but the letterforms aren't kerned naturally and don't work well in isolation (they appear to be standard typeset text rather than unique shapes that form part of your identity).

3. The identity doesn't translate well to greyscale, which is important for watermarking etc. I've seen your logo atop your concepts here, and the strong header banner you're using risks overpowering your creative work. You have introduced three/four colours into a concept before the actual artwork has been seen.

You have, however, made a vast improvement over the previous logo; the white stroke between the red and blue rings is an especially nice touch.

Here's how I'd tackle this problem differently, though:

1. On a blank piece of paper with a single graphite pencil, sketch your logo concept at roughly the size you've shown it in situ here.

2. Iterate the concept as you feel you need until you're really happy with your concept.

3. Once you have a final logo you really like, turn the page and draw the same logo as best you can. And again. And again.

4. Those steps will do a few things; first, they'll force you to think in single-colour applications first, which is how all good, distinctive logos start. Then they'll force you to simplify the concept to a point where you're not introducing additional crap into the logo. They'll also help you focus on the visual hierarchy of the elements based on their shapes. Designing this way is a great way to achieve balance in disparate elements of a logo. Once you've got something you're happy with, either scan and trace it, or simply reproduce the identity in Illustrator from scratch. Do it in black only (no colour yet). You're lucky in that you only have 6 characters you need to show in the logo; that's enough that you can actually draw the letterforms yourself if necessary, or at the very least you can devote some real attention to kerning pairs and stroke counters.

5. Once you have a great, black-only logo in Illustrator, add your colours to the symbol as required. You'll find this task quite difficult, which is good.

6. Enjoy your awesome logo that works great at small sizes, in single-colour reproduction, and which you can comfortably draw should the need arise .

Sorry to sound preachy; I just know that those steps were how we were taught at design school and while they appear backward, they're really useful to force your brain to make important, logo-defining decisions early in the design process.

[Bmac]

Thanks guys for the suggestions. I decided to go in a new direction for my logo. I ended up trying something similar to what elliot suggested (thanks for the ideas elliot). I made a "mirror image" 25 with BMAC across the top in a new font. What do you think?

Here is the new logo:

I also made an alternate logo, keeping the idea of a circle logo:

And here is a comparison of the recently released logo and the newest one:

[CAB]

I just thought of this now. How about you make the top of the two and five curve down a little to form the M in BMAC. Hope this makes sense.

[Bmac]

I updated the logos on my blog, if anyone cares.

[Bmac]

Here is another idea. Thanks to JQK for the basic idea.

Suggestions?

[JQK]

You have to make the white borders of the letters the same inside and outside of the circle. The "inside the circle" white letter borders are way too thin.

[Dodger]

There's too much going on up by the "BMAC". The outlines from the letters and the circle clash together and it looks really cluttered. Also, either add the highlighted effect from the numbers to the letters, or drop it altogether, I'd say drop it.