OUT
jamesturner | Fri, 07/08/2016 - 15:44
Brief from client
The brief for this design came from briefbox.com, as I am still at college and haven;t got any real clients. The brief was for an outdoor adventure centre called 'OUT', who wanted a logo created for them which was simple, professional and showed there overall love for adventure.
They offer climbing, mountaineering, cannoning
7 Comments
Hi James! Welcome to the Critique section!
It's really cool that you chose to go for a hand made type of logo.
Unfortunately, it's not really working.
First of, I understand you tried to picture an ice ax with the T. Problem is, a T is the first thing I see and it feels visually non consistent with the other two characters. Even though this is not a computer font, hand made typography has its rules when it comes to proportions, spaces, thickness, etc. The O and the U look somewhat consistent, but the T really doesn't gel really well with them and disrupts the whole thing.
Also, I always advise against substituting a character by a symbol, especially to students and beginners. More often than not, you'll wind up with something unbalanced, unreadbale and not really good looking . It's a tricky thing to achieve and requires a lot of work. Also, you didn't apply the same distressed texture on the T, which reinforces that disconnection with the O and U.
The other thing that buggers me is the fact that the whole logo seems to point downward. This is the kind of thing you want to avoid. It gives your logo a sense of negativity and it's really not appealing to the eye. That kind of symbolism and its meanings should always be taken into consideration. To sum it up, something that goes from left to right and points upward depicts growth, energy, positivity. Pointing downward does the exact opposite.
Now, what to do? A proper creative process. That's what.
First: research. Check out the market for this kind of business. Who are the competitors? How do their logo and general branding look like? What trend can you identify? What's good, what's not? Know your shit.
Then, inspiration. Creativity is your vehicle to achieve greatness and inspiration is the fuel you need to get it going. Peruse the web with the mind of a wolf in a sheep nursery. Check out sites like www.LogoPond.com, www.Dribbble.com, www.FromUpNorth.com and get yourself an account on www.Pinterest.com. With a good fix of inspiration, you should feel creativity flowing through your veins and feel like a total badass.
Third step. The most important step. In the history of steps, this is the importantest. Sketching. Let me repeat again. SKETCHING. Take a pen and make every single piece of paper your bitch. Sketch like their's no tomorrow. Sketch like your life depends on it. Sketch hundred of ideas, whatever goes through your mind. This is how cool ideas will almost magically pop up in your mind and also how you will learn to translate these ideas on paper. I know it can be frustrating sometimes when you have a cool idea in mind but feel unable to put it on paper. Sketching will help you to just do that. So do not hesitate to spend days on end doodling away.
The last part is execution. Refine, scan, refine, rescan, execute. This is how knowing Illustrator comes in handy. It just comes with practice and experience. If you're going for handmade typography, refining your logo with trace paper is super useful too. There are tons of videos on YouTube about that.
I hope this will help. Don't hesitate to come back here with an updated version of your logo.
On another note, what's briefbox.com? All I get is a german website about envelopes (These Germans and their weird fantasies)
Keep it up!
Thank you very much for your feedback, I guess you learn from your mistakes. I had done research into the outdoor adventure centre market and found that a lot of the centres use some sort of mountain shape in the logo. This was just an idea to try and be a bit unique.
Although is it acceptable to sometimes design using an idea that has been used a lot, or is it better/necessary to come up with something new, which is what I enjoy.
Sorry but one more question, how long roughly should i spend on each of the creative stages?
Thanks again for your help :) It has helped me a lot already.
Another trick to getting ideas going is "word-mapping" (which usually helps me a ton when I'm getting started). Start by quickly writing down every word (even the dumb ones, write them too!0 that comes to mind with regards to your project- i.e. outdoors. You will surprise yourself sometimes at how many things relate to your topic that you may not have thought of otherwise. Mountains aren't the only option to say "outdoors" =)
Good luck!
It's not really a matter of how much time you spend on each steps. Time isn't a factor here, though it's fair to say that if you're think you're all done in 10 minutes, you're doing something wrong =)
It's just that doing what must be done generally takes time. With practice and experience, you will know when you are ready to take it up to next step.
This gives me a horror movie vibe, not a fun adventure vibe. It is genuinely creepy. :)
Keep at it and do all of that stuff above me, all of it! :D
And hi!
Waffle, let's be honest about how creepy an adventure in a wild can be - so, in that sense it has that creepy vibe alright =) Wonder, if any of my concepts ever creeps you out?
Agree with Charlie 100%. I see a conceptual potential here with relegating letter " U " into a negative space between " O " and ax symbol and shape that into a canoe. Just an idea hit me. Again, welcome to our critique section and good luck!