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I just joined these boards in hope to find some guidance. I am not particularly a graphic designer, but I am working on designing my own logo. I have limited knowledge of Illustrator. I am diving into becoming a serious Prop Maker and I want to make a logo to represent my work.

This is where I am at right now after a good amount of tweaking. Basically I want the silver/white/dark turquoise color scheme, and the image I was sort of going for was a vague representation of a workbench, particularly mine I just built from scratch recently.

I hope to get some feed back as to what could be changed, what I did right, and simply to know my logo is good enough before I officially release it to all my social media sites.

enter image description here

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  • Hi Eric, welcome to GD.SE. Critique questions are a weird fit for the Stack Exchange model, so please have a look at our critique guidelines and see whether you can edit your question to make it fit those. I'd advice you to have a look at the tour and the help center as well, becaus they will get you up to speed on the SE model and what is on and off topic on this site. Thanks and have a good time here!
    – Vincent
    Mar 1, 2018 at 15:23
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    I would consider hiring a professional to design your logo if it is for business use.
    – Scott
    Mar 2, 2018 at 0:15
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    Your logo is the ambassador of your brand. It should not be a side project by an amateur. As it stands your logo concept looks very amateurish and low quality (not trying to offend. Just being frank) and as a potential client, I would expect the same qualities in your product. It's in your best interest to shell out for a professionally developed logo.
    – 13ruce
    Mar 2, 2018 at 14:53

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I would suggest you hire a professional to design your logo if it is for business use. Merely owning Adobe Illustrator does not qualify you as a logo designer any more than my owning a hammer qualifies me as a prop maker.

This may sound a bit harsh, but really I'm merely expressing the truth. Since art is a creative endeavor it's difficult at times to be forthright with comments for fear of squashing the creative spirit, which most here love and treasure. I mean, that's why we do what we do. So you often get answers that really want to be encouraging but aren't always the real truth.

If this is for business, then one must
look at things from a business perspective.

You are no more qualified to design your logo than you are to do anything outside your area of expertise such as the electrical or plumbing services in your office, or the accounting for your business, or your business legal services.

Yes, you can do some of it yourself, after all everything is NOT "rocket science", so to speak. However, there are also areas where your lack of qualifications are going to be immediately and readily apparent. Logo design is one such area.

There's far more thought which goes into a quality logo than merely "does it look good" or "Is it pretty". More thought than could ever effectively be described on a simple Q&A web site.

For example, how does this image look when used at smaller sizes?

enter image description here

Completely unreadable. Combine that with inaccurate perspective, the poor color choice, the lack of type consideration, and well... to me.. it's completely unacceptable.

There are also matters such as the psychology of colors, [2], how the eye tracks across a design, aka flow and movement, balance, unity, etc.

Some of these may come a bit naturally to those artistically inclined, and often it leads some to believe "Hey I have Illustrator/Photoshop, I can create a logo!" However, the reality is your logo will be the #1, most important, highest viewed, most used, image for your business ever. A logo, in an instant, will convey the quality of your services, your professionalism, and how you see yourself positioned in your field of work. Shouldn't you hire a professional who is experienced in the creation of such important images?

Consider, I'm sure there are many props I could make myself, but aren't there some props you just know you are better qualified to make? Even though it's difficult to express to clients politely that they really shouldn't be trying to make "that" on their own?

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    I was actually thinking about your last paragraph; if I need something professionally done I'd hire a professional to do it.
    – Luciano
    Mar 2, 2018 at 15:30
  • Good point that it's unreadable at a small size +1
    – LateralTerminal
    Mar 2, 2018 at 15:36
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This is a difficult question to answer.

A logo does not need to be a literal representation of what your company do; instead it's a mark to distinguish your business from others. Many brands have logos that are just a well designed wordmark, others have abstract symbols or shapes, and some have a symbol that actually are representative. The key is that a good logo should be clear, recognisable. You have to think of the applications: are you planning to print on a business card / use it in a website? Are you going to make it into an icon?

If you don't know what to do and don't want to hire a designer to create a logo for you, keep it simple: you are already using 2 different fonts, 3 colors, borders and shapes that are only going to make your logo more difficult to read at small sizes. It would be better to pick one font and just write the name of your company with it. Less is more.

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  • Ok thank you, these were the type of answers I was seeking
    – Eric Renner
    Mar 1, 2018 at 19:12
  • I only saw 2 colors? Unless you're counting white as a color
    – LateralTerminal
    Mar 1, 2018 at 21:05
  • @LateralTerminal Light gray, Green, Darg gray (greeinish)
    – Welz
    Mar 2, 2018 at 1:16
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    I actually see 4 colors (without white)
    – Welz
    Mar 2, 2018 at 1:17
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It's not a bad logo so far.

  1. Fix the perspective of the text

  2. Reduce it to 2 colors. You should figure out colors for web and print. For print you should decide on two Pantone colors.

  3. If you already like the colors you have you can use photoshop to get an idea of what Pantone colors are close. Then you would go back to Illustrator and open swatches, then color books, select the pantone colors and apply it. enter image description here

How to fix the perspective!

The one major thing I would suggest is to fix the perspective of the text using the free transform tool.

You can click on the gif for a larger image.

enter image description here

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    You realize.... in Photoshop, using spot colors (Pantone) is nowhere near as simple as merely using the color picker, right? There is considerably more one must do in Photoshop to actually apply and use actual spot colors. And often the on-screen color picker reference can be inaccurate when comparing the color to an actual Pantone swatch book.
    – Scott
    Mar 2, 2018 at 14:48
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    "It's not a bad logo so far" - are you freaking kidding me?
    – Luciano
    Mar 2, 2018 at 14:53
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    @Luciano Emphasis on "so far" can't we be nice to new people though? :P
    – LateralTerminal
    Mar 2, 2018 at 15:06
  • @Scott I was implying you would use that to find a closest matching pantone color and then apply said color with color books in illustrator. I guess I should have specified that. I made an edit to my answer.
    – LateralTerminal
    Mar 2, 2018 at 15:07
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    @Scott I won't argue that its accurate. It's definitely NOT accurate. I still standby that it's a good way to get started if he happens to like the Pantone colors that photoshop says are close to his colors because it's really difficult to look through the entire book your first time. Plus you get to see the pantone color compared to his original color (even though I'm sure his screen is not calibrated) it's still a good way to get some ideas.
    – LateralTerminal
    Mar 2, 2018 at 15:21
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I would like to point out, that the desk is being viewed from an angled perspective, but the text is flat. I would definitely change the text to match the desk.

Also the shelf is not the correct view (might have been intentional) but it's coming in from the exact opposite perspective as the desk.

Additionally, using 2 fonts is usually frowned upon (unless there is a very good logical reason) and these two in particular don't seem to compliment each other.

Personal thing, you might like it, but the super pointy legs seem a bit off to me

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  • Thanks, I am adjusting pieces little by little trying to form it into something decent. The feet used to be angled as well. I adjusted this so it is not straight up table legs. I am still messing with what works best for the legs. The shelf part, I have changed a number of times. Used to be a trapezoid with the top raised above the entire thing.
    – Eric Renner
    Mar 1, 2018 at 3:24
  • Also the fonts, I may be making it harder than it needs to be, but I find this a challenging task, narrowing down what works.
    – Eric Renner
    Mar 1, 2018 at 3:25
  • @EricRenner +1 Welz But you should have told him how to do it, maybe suggest a tool? Since he's new to illustrator. This is actually really easy if you use the free transform tool. I'll show you with a gif here on my answer.
    – LateralTerminal
    Mar 1, 2018 at 20:39
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I think a good idea will be to take the text out of the image, put it to the right and make an icon from the table. Use sans-serif font for EREN and uppercase font with 200 letter spacing for PROPS. Stack one on the other. As far as the icon is concerned instead of top table desk, use three thick lines. That will resemble letter E. I would also use brighter color.

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