Critique request: Logo design for anime related products

Question

I'm designing a logo for my small business, Taiyaki studio that will create and sell stickers and apparel - a small Japanese anime inspired company where minimal, cool and modern designs are of elevated importance.

Background for the name: The logo takes inspiration from a Taiyaki which is a popular Japanese desert and happens to be my favourite. I’ve always loved Japanese culture and watched a lot of anime so being able to include some part of that in a logo is my main goal.

The logo will go on a range of sizes: from small scale, like social media profile pictures, to business cards, to logos embroidered on sleeves, to digital, to a sticker.

Features in order of importance:

1. Minimal and cool designs
2. Modern - yes, but not too out there
3. Japanese - just the subject matter taking inspiration from Japan, but not in your face

Variations:

Questions:

1. Is this logo too "busy"? How can it be improved?

2. Are the lines in this logo too thin? The black bordering line of the fish slices need to be there?

3. I’m not too sure on what font would work best with this style of logo. I was thinking something thin and sleek. Any suggestions?

I am not a professional designer. And I only do this for fun, but I want to get your opinions on it.

Answer 1

Having been to Japan a few times, I know they like quirky stuff and many times things do not need to make sense in Japan. Randomness is big there and meaning has a different, non-western vibe.

So in a strange way I think this design is not that bad actually. Quite good. I like the fish.

Some ideas:

• maybe try a different font for the wording, or at least make the name slightly bigger, or thicker
• try this one https://www.dafont.com/neon-80s.font?text=TAIYAKI
• or https://www.dafont.com/arista-pro.font?text=TAIYAKI
• or https://www.dafont.com/mignone.font?text=TAIYAKI (rounded, bubbly fonts are very present in japanese everyday stuff)
• maybe work on the fish some more, making the lines a little more wavy, not so straight, like a hand drawing type of line (see below)

Answer 2

It's merely my opipion, but I think there's a mismatch between the fish and the font. Maybe try using a rounder or bolder font – I think it would match the fish in a nice way.

Not so long ago I made a logo for a client with a quite clean and cartoony cat character for the brandmark/mascot and a handdrawn-ish, fuzzy font for the wordmark. At the time I thought it was a great idea, but now it seems totally unbalanced to me.