How to choose a logo

T

Tudor-rose

New Member
Hi all,

So I'm not actually a designer I am a client who is having a logo designed and I now have 3 designs all have their pros and cons and I can not decide how to pick one. I have a business that is steadily growing as an equine nutritionist helping people to figure out what to feed their horses. I decided to send the potential logos to some horse owning friends and past clients and there is a clear split as to which ones they prefer.

I thought I would come to a group of folks who do this all the time. What advice can you give with regards to picking a logo that you hope down the line will create a brand for your company?

I have one logo that seems too simple but gets across the message that balance is important to what I do. I have another that is very professional looking and very artistic but doesn't capture the issue of balance so well and neither really scream nutrition. Although both include an image of a horse.

Is it possible to meet all design brief criteria? And if not, how do you decide which parts of the brief to let go?

I can post the logos if needed I just wasn't sure what the etiquette is for posting someones work.

Thanks!
 
Hello, it would be good to see a low res. version for each logo. As a personal preference. I always go for simplicity with a twist (maybe a modified font or similar) 1 or 2 colours max (possibly solid colours not gradients). Another thing to remember is that a logo shouldn't need to tell the whole story. For example: the gap logo does not have any images of jeans, tees and jumpers,,, but it's simple well balanced and easy to remember.
 
logos attached?

I have attached the 3 versions of the logo as jpegs.

You raise a good point about the logo not needing to say everything. In fact many of the major brands say nothing, what do Gap, adidas, nike, virgin mean anyway! At this point if they ever meant anything no one can remember anyway!

Hey where in Devon are you? I grew up in Tavistock.
 

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I quite like the 3rd one. It has a traditional look to it. The other two look a bit 90's in my opinion.

I would try and brighten up the olive colour on the second text line and the horse illustration if it were me.

Hope this helps :icon_biggrin:
 
Thanks CYoung we are working on the horse in 3 to make it more friendly he looks a bit too much like an angry bronc right now. So you don't feel that the fact that #3 does not suggest balance in any way is an issue? It does appear professional and individualized and the horses head will hopefully end up looking more like the head of a horse who is in motion which should suggest performance a bit better. It doesn't really scream what I do but as has been said that is not always necessary?

Thanks again!
 
You must remember a logo doesn't tell the full story, but it needs to look professional, and by bundling lots of elements often makes it look a bit messy.

Look at it from my point of view - I design stationary, offer printing, web design. I can't have my logo with business cards, flyers, a picture of a website. But I have an emblem which is essentially a star shape with a 'Y' shaded in which represents the first letter of my surname.

- I'm not saying my logo is what people should tailor theirs to, its just my style I suppose. But I think people here will agree saying that you don't need to add everything about your business into the logo.

:icon_biggrin:
 
I prefer 3 but pleased you said you are going to make it look less agressive! I also think a slightly brighter colour or colours would be good. Not sure of the wheat..perhaps makes it a little too much..

Pauline
 
Hello. Good advice so far that a logo doesn't have to literally spell out, by depicting either visually or with straplines, what your company does. The letter, flyer or brochure will have the detail that tells people what it is you do.
Think of big brands: Guinness (Harp) - gold on black, Nike (Swoosh/tick), Gap (good one!), Mulberry (Bush/tree), Heinz (framed graphic detail)....all of which conjour up an image of a lifestyle/service, but none of them actually say...nice stout, sports equipment, fashion/clothing...

Be brave and choose the one that you think is strongest and you 'like' rather than second-guessing what you think the client wants to see. I should imagine your market is very specific/focussed and so a professional, sophisticated logo will reflect a level of quality that potential customers can expect. A logo isn't a mini billboard - it's a flagpost to your company/service. It's more important to get it out there.

No. 3 is the best of the 3 options. The others try too hard to cram in all of the elements.
 
revision to logo 3

So I just got the following revision back from the designer for #3. Certainly the horse looks more friendly and looks to be in motion. Additionally as the horse is not a weaker image the text stands out more. However I think the swirls under the horse are too strong and need to be more refined? I also miss the additional swirl that used to be between the Q of equilibrate and the wheat. But perhaps it is cleaner this way? The horse needs a bit of tweaking but as a horse person I can handle that one :icon_biggrin:

What are you thoughts? Is this an improvement?
 

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PCbranding good advice!

PCbranding - thank you for giving me permission to just pick the one I like. Such a simple piece of advice but very powerful becuase if I ultimately don't really like it I will never feel confident standing behind it and promoting it regardless of how good a piece of design the logo might be!

Thanks :icon_thumbup:
 
Think option 3 was thet best route to work up, and the new head is an improvement over the angry version. Still have some unease with the relationship between the flow of the corn and the strap line underneath. Think the text will be too wave-ish if it follows the corn, so it may be worth trying to get the corn to follow the text a bit more and fill the gap that's there. Ozwaldo.
 
I agree no: 3 is working best and you really do need to pick the one that your happy with - it is your business afterall and you need to live with it. Only things I'd say is that now no: 3 has been developed there are too many elements, when the logo is used small say on a business card alot of these elements will be lost and unreadable.

Where possible keep it... simple, memorable, and if possible with a little twist.

The colours aren't right for me either, they are too subdued, even though your industry doesn't require bright neon colours the could do with looking at as currently they are making the whole logo weak in appearance.
This is probably more feedback than you wanted though ... :icon_biggrin:
 
dot design said:
I agree no: 3 is working best and you really do need to pick the one that your happy with - it is your business afterall and you need to live with it. Only things I'd say is that now no: 3 has been developed there are too many elements, when the logo is used small say on a business card alot of these elements will be lost and unreadable.

Where possible keep it... simple, memorable, and if possible with a little twist.

The colours aren't right for me either, they are too subdued, even though your industry doesn't require bright neon colours the could do with looking at as currently they are making the whole logo weak in appearance.
This is probably more feedback than you wanted though ... :icon_biggrin:
Click to expand...

Totally agree - even with the changes I think you need to alter colours to give it some more character :icon_thumbup:
 
color

I totally agree. The designer told me to ignore the color for now as it can be changed. I am not sure I like the wavy tagline and I'm not sure it even needs to be part of the logo it can be added separately on business cards etc as needed.

For some reason I have this image of the Q in Equilibrate being a different color to the rest of the text? But anyway what colors speak to you all? I'm thinking the wheat should be gold as horse people tend to be conservative and they might not get it if it is some other color than the color wheat actually is!:icon_rolleyes:
 
Tudor-rose said:
I totally agree. The designer told me to ignore the color for now as it can be changed. I am not sure I like the wavy tagline and I'm not sure it even needs to be part of the logo it can be added separately on business cards etc as needed.

For some reason I have this image of the Q in Equilibrate being a different color to the rest of the text? But anyway what colors speak to you all? I'm thinking the wheat should be gold as horse people tend to be conservative and they might not get it if it is some other color than the color wheat actually is!:icon_rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Wavy line is not right at all, looks awful and unprofessional the way it is, perhaps ask your designer to try something else with that! Your idea is good, separate use maybe. The horse is lovely, I love it, and it's going to be nice logo.

Be aware, if you choose gold as one of your colours, this will be more expensive to reproduce litho, and it's not possible to get a true gold digitally (you can get some nice coloured versions, but they will not be metallic as they are made up of CMYK whereas litho it is a spot (pantone) ink - custom mixed ink which has actual gold in it)) If you want consistency you need to pick spot colours. Then you have a match to colour if you are having it printed cmyk, and you can perhaps get cheaper jobs litho. For eample if you had letterheads done, and your designer made your logo 2 colours (spot colours) and perhaps used one of these spots for the text on the letterhead, you'd have a 2 colour job. Much cheaper than CMYK which is four - cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

I don't think the q should be a different colour to the rest.
 
I prefer the new version, the horse looks less like a chess piece now, I would prefer the strapline to be all one weight of text and along a straight baseline smaller and ranged right if part of the logo or totally separate.
 
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