Critique Request: Personal logo. How do I achieve a specific effect?

Question

Thanks for taking the time to have a look at my logo. I'll provide a little background info first.

Brand and logo info

1. This is the first iteration of the logo.
2. The concept is for a personal development site (blog, code snippets, portfolio).
3. The name of the site is Divergent Code.
4. The desired effect is the look of square brackets while also achieving the letters D and C.

Personal background info

1. I have little to no background in graphic design and fully expect a lot to be wrong with this logo.
2. I am not afraid of criticism. If in answering the primary question you also provide any critique, please be blunt.

The logo

I understand that critiques do not always follow the Site Guidelines, so I will be attempting to give this question a very specific goal. Please let me know if my question in any way does not adhere to the site guidelines and I will either edit it or delete it.

So here is my question to you guys: How do I go about achieving my desired effect (Letters D and C incorporating the look of brackets as found in computer program code) with what I have, while maintaining a professional looking logo? The problem is that I'm not sure the concept is being conveyed. Objectively, I have a suspicion it has to do with the thickness of the lines or the width of the gaps. In either case, when I try to adjust them, the logo feels either too blocky or to spaced.

If you are feeling particularly generous, I would love to hear what you see about the logo that needs improved. Is it a workable logo at all, and am I overlooking something I shouldn't (e.g. I noticed a lot of these critiques are asked after providing multiple logos and variants. Should I have done the same)? I'm trying to be conscientious of my inexperience and not end up like what this commenter on another site described.

Answer 1

I like your concept and it's already better than a lot of logos I see out in the wild.

You don't have to be literal with the logo mark because you also have a wordmark, which is actually quite serviceable on its own.

Logos should speak more to your target market and their purpose is to differentiate your brand from the field of your competition. You should do some research - who are your competitors and what do their logos look like? If you put them all on a page together, will yours stand out?

Your logo should also evoke the purpose/vision/mission of the thing it represents. So you need to have a good sense of what your "product" is and what it is that you're branding.

All the touchy-feely-designy things aside, on a more technical point, I would personally like to see the wordmark be the same width as the logo mark above it, and maybe you can jerry the proprotions so that it all fits nicely into a square (and looks good shrunk down to 16 pixels for a favicon).

Maybe stretch the right gray bracket wide enough to accomodate [code] underneath it. Maybe not.

Answer 2

Good logo, try using vibrant strong color for the brackets, and less strong color for the middle part. That will attract the eyes to the brackets more.

(with these colors) blue for brackets and grey for the middle part. Or red for brackets (suggestion).

*I couldn't add this as a comment, so hopefully it helps as an answer

Answer 3

You have done a great job of creating a concept! Here are a few suggestions:

1. Thicker lines should be used to make the logo look better and make it more readable when scaled down. You can see this link for reference https://www.logoground.com/uploads/201526212015-04-012501655mmglyph.jpg I have no ownership of this.. Just picked it up to give ypu an exampe of the sort of thickness you need.

2. You can use the same colour for the brackets and another colour for the curves of C and D. That will make the brackets more prominent and better comvey your identity.

3. when you change the thickness make sure the gap between the different elements is sufficient enough to be visible when scaled down.

4. Experiment with colour combinations. Read up on colour theory, I feel that helps. Try to make sure the colours not only match your brad and field but also attract your target audience.

5. The text has to be way bigger than what it is at for now. The "Divergent code" should be atleast the same width as the icon. It migh look better if its longer though. And experiment with the fonts as well. You can also look up "best fonts for logos" to get an idea of what kind of fonts are being used these days.

All of these are just my suggestions of course, its all up to what you want it to look like in the end. I hope this helps you :)