“see it as a tag”

That’s the thing - if you have to tell your potential customers/stakeholders/whoever how they should see the logo, the logo doesn’t work.It’s not like you can write an explanation next to the logo everytime you’re using it, get my point ?

That’s actually what the main purpose of a good logo is - to bring across what the company does, their values or at least be so unique and memorable everyone connects it with your brand.

So far everyone i showed the logo without further explanation, said either “hole”, “moon” or “circle” - i haven’t heard “tag” yet.

Don’t get me wrong, i’m not trying to bash the concept here, it’s rather trying to make Spreadshirt think what a good logo’s *function* really is and to remind that sometimes a concept might be totally clear to everyone involved in the project (*because* they are involved) but not neccessarily to someone not involved (like potential customers).

Does it work as a logo ?

In other words, would Spreadshirt “own” the hole - as in would people associate Spreadshirt with a hole ? Here’s the thing with “fexible” designs: They’re flexible because of their generic nature which is fine because it opens a ton of possibilities what can be done with it but at the same time it’s their weakest point -> they’re so generic they’re not unique and distinctive enough.

To check if a logo really works, you have to imagine not the perfect but the most hostile situations where your logo might show up one day; say as a standalone on b&w fax sheet for example.Now how unique and memorable would just a hole with no company name next to it be on that fax paper ? Would people still know it’s from Spreadshirt ? Nike can get away with their swoosh for two reasons:
First, at the time it was released, it was a distinctive swoosh (and it still is).Second, the pumped millions of dollars in ad campaigns to make the swoosh known so after a while they “owned” that swoosh.But this hole (no matter how nicely executed it is) lacks the Nike Swoosh distinctiveness and the million of marketing dollars.

In the end, it’s not the question of “..what we see is..” but what your potential customers see in it.If they’re the ones that as well see “the idea of tagging and labelling in a consequent but at the same time reduced manner” in the logo, then fine.If they just see a hole and don’t connect it with your brand, you’re lost.

The marketing dollars decide how generic your logo can be really.

Isn’t this what’s about a logo: a great illustrated icon that reveals the company name in a beautifull / lovely way? Frank mentioned “maybe too lovely”, but i think that, while many submissions are using hearts and stiches - i never seen in 11years of graphic design so many stiches and hearts like i did here in this competition - the company is either about embrodery or a meet-to-person website.

While many submissions kept the shirt as a 90% of the symbol the message gets lost a bit. Where is the spread message, where is the company to company message? How can a stiched label spread? It is stitched. How can a shirt encompass the marketing power of the company along with the “your own label” slogan.

Maybe a few words along with my entry would help:
The message i was trying to convey was to combine two ellements : one coming from company name and one from the tag line. So i combined the shirt with a label in a very illustrative way - @frank - this is about a logo, right? - and then thought to let the symbol float, this way i avoided the “fixed” in place logo and touched a bit the spread effect, that i guess the company was trying to convey also. Using two colors in the text and two colors in the symbol also contribuited to the entire composition, adding unity of the whole idea a .

I believe it’s hard to describe a t shirt label that, by his nature somehow …spreads arround. I think i managed it, think of a small feather taken by the wind…i mean, well, spreading in the entire world, think of a label shirt spread. ;)

A logo should be about : idea, message, graphic execution in this order, every one having the same 33.333333(3)% importance from a whole.

Thanks for the oportunity, thanks for the comments, it’s a big challenge for me and - i always hate to say that when i am trying to conceive a logo - it’s fun this time .

Cheers,

Emi