Below you’ll find the votes of Scott Hansen front man of the band Tycho and the fantastic ISO50. Here he discusses who should win and his honorable mentions:
First off I want to say that this was a very hard decision. There were a lot of great entries and all of them had their own strengths. The ones I ended up picking were the concepts that best laid out an entire brand with many stylistic possibilities, sort of a “system” of branding and not just a logo. The final decision between the top 3 came down to each concept’s potential for practical application. They all look good, but the branding scheme needs to be functional and scalable and only one concept seemed to fully meet all these criteria.
#1. “Think Spreadshirt 2 (icon versions)” by Inadimova
This is excellent; clean, concise, recognizable. The color and icon variations really take this concept to another level. This could be applied in many ways and scale to various sizes and applications while remaining legible. The icon is distinct and could stand on it’s own without any confusion as to it’s implication. Overall it’s minimalist and unobtrusive; it would sit well with any design, something that’s very important when you’re going to be branding other people’s work. It would work great with all sorts of promotional materials and campaigns, fitting well into various form factors.
The first tweak that comes to mind would be to make the thought bubble a bit more traditional, have the tail of it curve down to the right and into a point. As it stands, it is pretty obvious what it is, but for some reason I keep asking why the point is cut off. The type treatment is strong, but a bit generic, I would like to see it refined just a tiny bit to be more distinct. But given how strong the logomark is, I wouldn’t think the wordmark would ever need to stand on it’s own so this may be a moot point. Finally, I’d like to see the type conform to the grid of the logo more, the tagline sort of dangles there but isn’t really aligned with any element of the logomark. If the tail on the thought bubble were to curve down to the right into a point and the tagline were made to align with it, this might solve the problem.
#2. “Play With the Forms” by Lufograf
This is an excellent overall concept, it plays well on the concept of personalization. Unfortunately I don’t see any practical way this would scale to most of the required applications. It feels more like a single campaign, and a great one at that. I could see this being combined with the “Think Spreadshirt 2″ concept to great effect. It already incorporates the thought bubble and icons, mixing and matching those would provide a lot of possibilities. But on it’s own, I don’t think the wordmark is distinctive enough and the logomark is more of an illustration. It would look great large on shirts and as part of a campaign including some other branding, but on it’s own it doesn’t really read as a logo and is a bit too vague. But I want to reiterate, this is a beautiful concept which should be employed in some fashion, just not as the core branding.
#3. “LabelHeads” by legofish
This too is a great overall concept, I am just not quite happy with the execution. It lends itself well to promotional campaigns and really drives home the personalization concept and could be used very well in the context of an internet meme / viral type of marketing situation. I would just like to see the wordmark and icons refined some more as I feel that stylistically, it’s almost too specific and could start to feel dated quickly.
#Honorable Mentions.
I wanted to include these as they were really hard to exclude, they each were very strong. But in the end, I didn’t see them being able to extend into all of the various applications that the top 3 could.
“Molecular Goodness” By theScientists: This is very similar to the “Play With The Forms” concept and could be employed to similar effect. I just think the “Forms” concept was better executed.
“The Signal” by Laurent: I really like the concept and particularly like the execution. Used in conjunction with the icons this could be very effective. I am just not sure the core concept of the peeling label grommet is strong enough to carry a brand.
“Labelrange“ by Nieke: This is a very good looking logo, refined and distinctive, but I don’t see this expanding into all the possibilities of the others.
Thanks Scott! Check out Scotts work here http://iso50.com/
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“This is excellent; clean, concise, recognizable. The color and icon variations really take this concept to another level. This could be applied in many ways and scale to various sizes and applications while remaining legible. The icon is distinct and could stand on it’s own without any confusion as to it’s implication. Overall it’s minimalist and unobtrusive; it would sit well with any design, something that’s very important when you’re going to be branding other people’s work. It would work great with all sorts of promotional materials and campaigns, fitting well into various form factors. “
This series has provided a lot of fun and humour over the course of the OLP. I think we all knew it wouldn’t make the shortlist, but Nelson was obviously having as much fun with it as we all were and so the new versions kept coming. Would Scissor recover the HQ? How would he counter the threat of Pollutionman?
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