He wanted to stick with the cross-
Ruthy (159 pencils) | Mon, 2009-01-12 13:50
I know this breaks so many rules of logo design with the 3D FX and the shadow. I know the cross for pc repairs has been done to death. My client has been hounding me for something shiny and orb like and just couldn't let go of the cross. He said he has been using it for 6 years and his customers have come to know it. I'm really struggling to feel good about this one, but I am doing my best to learn. It's probably obvious but I am only just starting illustrator. Do you know how long it took me to figure out how to do the cross in the center of the orb? The orb I did myself using a tutorial and it was fun. Forgive my ignorance. I know most of you guys are experienced and college trained professionals. My client is delighted with this by the way, but I really want to know if it sucks and how much.
"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Princess Leia
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Thanks jHouse.
I love this website.
Still looking for a donation button.
Ruth
"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Princess Leia
Don't worry about that. We are ad supported. Thanks a lot for the thought. :)
Regarding your logo. I like it's simplicity. However you may want to point out to your client that his logo looks like the swiss flag. Not a bad association if he can get away with it.
beyond jhouse's comment, i think the mark is fine. you do need to have a b&w or grayscale version of it as well, probably one with none of the web-2.0 effects on it.
my real issue is with the type. first, it looks like arial. i wouldn't use a font that is as common as that. it removes a potential element of uniqueness.
second, is the real name "the PC GP" or "the PC Group?" PC GP seems odd.
third, the word "THE" has the most prominence in the logo, and i presume it's the least important word in the name. part of that is because the type is so big compared to the logo mark. combined with the use of arial, it makes the name look really chunky and horsey.
last, it's kerned very loosely. i would definitely tighten up the letter spacing, but not until after you tried some other fonts. i would do a type study, where you use a number of different fonts with that text and print them out and look at them all to see which one(s) give you a less clunky look and add a little character or flair. doesn't need to be a funky or fancy font, but using a font that's default on everything microsoft on every PC looks, for lack of a better word, weak. it's so ubiquitous that it loses a lot of its ability to communicate. arial and times new roman have been gutted pretty badly by being default MS choices.
Thank you so much for the valuable feedback gwells. I'm hard at work following your advice. The GP is for general practitioner which in Ireland is what everyone calls the family doctor. And you're right people do think it stands for group.
back to work...I just installed 1000 new fonts on my mac...
"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Princess Leia
nope, didn't get "general practitioner" at all. that's a fairly unused term in the US at this point, not sure about ireland. and you should take some comments about that kind of thing with a grain of salt, based on culture (although i think, in this case, it's still valid).
as far as the 1000 fonts, i would still stick with something fairly conservative and simple, not a funky display font. just something that has some subtle uniqueness to it. even something like trade gothic or myriad would be a better choice (off the top of my head), despite the fact that they aren't radically different from arial.
With due respect to Greg, "GP" is very commonly used wherever I have lived within the US, but even so, I didn't get it at all, not even with the red cross staring me in the face. That may be because most people in the US associate that mark with the real Red Cross, whose primary service providers tend to be nurses or paramedics, not physicians. It could also be that the THE just grabs too much attention, so the eye doesn't make the connection. So yeah, I totally agree that it's a mistake to give equal prominence to "the" in the logo. It dwarfs the more important PC GP. Would you consider stacking PC and GP, with a reduced THE?
Mara
well, you *do* live out in the country where you're more likely to have GPs instead of HMOs... :P
I was PR Director for the Visiting Nurse Association in DC in the early 80s, and have had other medical clients. Maybe it's more an industry jargon thing that I picked up. Out here in the country, we call our GPs things like Dave, John, Lisa, and in one exotic case (by rural Virginia standards), Myron. There are some others, but I don't know them because they don't hang out in town very much. They're on the road, making house calls. Honest.
But this isn't helping our friend with the logo. I wonder if the client is charmed by all the effects, drop shadow, etc. and will be disappointed when these things don't translate well in a lot of offline media.
Mara
1000 new fonts can make your mac works a bit slower. that's why we have font explorers, to see and choose which one we really need to install :)
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I've never heard GP before though I have heard the term general practitioner, and I used to do prepress magic on thousands of health insurance directories
I like this logo, though I think I'd crisp up the cross edges
you could maybe make a play on the swiss armyknife thing
Web 2.0 goes well since it's for PC's not much more to add
good luck :)
"...and mamma cried: Watch out where the huskies go, don't you eat that yellow snow" - Frank Zappa
font looks like it's floating and doesn't match.
Thanks everyone who answered. I did more work on it and made some of the changes that were suggested. I can't find a way to attach an updated version so I will create a new critique. Didn't get a chance to crisp up the cross edges yet.
Have to figure out how to do that.
Ruth
"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Princess Leia