Following on from pt1
So lets recap where we started, week 1 got off to a flying start. Loads of great submissions and plenty we liked such as Blooming Print, but couldn’t pick as they weren’t close enough to the brief. So lets review what we had before we started the contest, it wasn’t this:
But:
this.
We already had a great design in the fingerprint, it was distinctive and incredibly well designed. Changing it was a hard decision, fueled by two key factors
a) The new claim “your own label”, we didn’t think it suitably supported this idea
b) It didn’t help people intuitively understand what they can do at Spreadshirt, make their own individual apparel and create and share their own apparel label through our Spreadshops.
When thinking about our new logo, these are your starting points. Running this contest again so soon was a big decision, so we couldn’t just take a new logo which is only slightly different to the old one like these:
Its nice to see the Spread and Shirt stacked, it breaks them up and makes them clearer, but we haven’t significantly made what we do more intuitive with this logo.
Simple Spreadshirt logo by Sean
While we liked the simplicity of this logo revision, again its too similar to have overcome the negative aspects of our current logo.
When your viewing/creating designs, think first
a) Does it represent Spreadshirt, our business and our tagline
b) Do I like it and is it memorable and unique?
Not that B is less important than A, but we can’t take B without A ;)
So a great start, now it’ll be great to see what you come up this week!! Any submissions so far from the shortlist or otherwise that you think really nailed a & b?
“Not that B is less important than A, but we can’t take B without A ;)”
why not? hum thats why nike has a swosh, because the swosh totally represents sports? or adidas three stripes do? well rather not. i think they work because they are unique and of course both spend a lot of time & money to build them up. i think it’s hard to come up with a unique one, which represents all of it, because how to visualize individuality/ self expression, which is the key of spreadbusiness, when you only choose logos with labels, but restrict “blooming spirit. i mean labels represent the tagline. but somehow it’s rather unique and totally not creative or even emotinally. so it only suits one point of a!
i’m agree with you captain paranoid!!
I agree with capt. p. in some points. (Though Nike did not spend a lot of money on their logo since their intern developed that logo that time.)
Both the Nike and Adidas logo DO represent sports and probably a lot more than just a swoosh or stripes. It is just unique, because it is not “in your face” like putting a label in the logo and writing on that label “its your label”.
Nike stands for the speed and action of sports as well as kind of checkbox for “yeah, I just did it”. Adidas represents the three first places to achieve in a competition (gold, silver…) furthermore the new logo shows a kind of mountain, showing challenges and goals that can be achieved.
All in all a good logo represents what the company stands for but in a more elegant and indirect way. You assume the consumer to be intelligent and figuring out what the three stripes for example mean to him instead of giving him an explanation right away.
In my opinion A and B are equally important.
you pointed out what i wanted to say. i mean it should be more a metapher or synonim instead of “in your face”-logo.
There’s a simple reason why Nike can have a swoosh logo, Adidas can have their stripes but Spreadshirt can’t have a total abstract logo, now matter how memorable it is.
Reason is: Nike and Adidas have gazillions of marketing dollars, Spreadshirt hasn’t.
Which is to say that companies like Nike could have chosen *any* abstract logo they liked and *still* would have been able to make it known and connect it to their brand, simply because they have enough money to pay for ads, commercials, billboards etc all with their logo on.This way you can push *any* logo into the market.
Spreashirt on the other hand don’t have that kind of marketing budget which means the depend on a logo that at least gives a clue on first sight what their core business is all about.
Because otherwise potential customers wouldn’t know what the company does or what their service is and given nowadays short attention spans they could loose that potential customer due to an abstract, maybe even memorable but non-saying logo.
Rule of thumb: The lower the overall marketing budget, the less abstract the logo should be.
So yes, you always need A B.
Logodesigner is also right in a certain way. That is why I always tried to embed a tshirt in my designs, so that you could tell that it deals with shirts of course. At the same time putting a label with label on it is definitely too cheesy for my taste. I still think the viewer should not be treated as stupid that you have to explain everything to him. I think we need to find a good middle way between in your face and abstract.
Hmmm… let’s not forget that the client has made it clear that a label should be integral to the design. to ignore this is to ignore what the client is (currently) asking of us. While finding a good middle ground may suit your designer’s sensibilities, it doesn’t necessarily suit spreadshirt’s.
Of course, the tagline isn’t a permanent part of the logo – no doubt in reduced format the tagline will be removed – so it would be nice if the logo (in some way) said ‘your own label’ without needing the words on there. Emphasising this tagline – something I guess spreadshirt feels is very representative of the company ethos and service – doesn’t strike me as ‘dumbing down’ for the viewer.
The briefing says ‘Support our tagline “Your Own Label”’. This does not sound to me like “add a label into the logo.”
You say the tagline will get too small added into the logo, thats right. When you would remove the attached words in a small version, the logo needs to work without those words, why do you then think its necessary to add them in a large version?
I did not say it is dumb to emphasize the tag line, that IS part of the briefing. If you think emphasizing the tagline can only be achieved by adding a real label into the logo then it is your interpretation. This again feels like treating the consumer as stupid, but thats just my personal opinion, so its fine if we disagree on this.
Without sounding too much of a wimp (hopefully), I think it’s just asking too much to support a logo with that tagline without using a label. My first logo: reasonably well-received, but it didn’t say ‘label’ enough (even though there was a subtle/oblique reference to a label style… well I thought so anyway…).
I can only respond to the brief set, which, considering the feedback, at present requires some sort of physical label or tag in place.
The trouble with these open source projects is often designers fight like cats in a bag to justify their opinion, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if I’m right or you’re right. It’s the client who must live with the final product.
I dont wanna fight the rest of you guys but competition is important and so is making clear ones own point of view (what we are doing right now obviously).
I agree with you, in the end its the client’s choice anyway.
Out of interest – I get that there’s a weekly review, but is there a set time when spreadshirt decides on a ‘grand finalist’? Do we find out if any got through to the finals from week 1 any time soon?
Cheers,
dazzler