Critique - a logo for a music streaming service

Question

I created a logo for a school project, with the brief of creating a logo for a start up company, offering an online music streaming service.

I chose the name Melodious Records for the company and made the main logo with a light blue gradient as it stands for: health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness.

The main shape of the logo is made to look like a record with the text bent inside it. The hole in the middle however cuts into that shape to create a letter r to stand for Record in the name and also changes the shape of the record to look like an arrow circulating. This was intentional to create somewhat a sense of movement.

This is my first project on creating an oridinally designed logo and im interested on feedback on the following points:

• Are there any mistakes in terms of elements and composition? (eg,colour)
• Does it relate to the target audience?
• What could i do to make it better?

Answer 1

A few points to start with:

1. Explore more interesting font choices. Very rarely can a logo succeed using a basic, sans serif font like Arial/Helvetica. There are many other choices that are similar yet have much more personality.

2. There's nothing wrong with the color blue in and of itself, but your reasoning for using is doesn't make much sense. I don't associate "health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness" with the music industry/streaming service. If your business was in the medical field, maybe? But IMO you should be focusing on words like modern, exciting, technologically advanced, cutting-edge... words that relate more to the music industry. Then find colors that fit with those.

3. I see your thought behind the circular shape, but I don't think it portrays a record close enough to really get that. Maybe if you used more black instead of blue, and added some "grooves" to make it look more like a real record... The negative space creating the letter "R" is interesting, but it seems a little forced to me. I feel like if you're going to use an initial, the "M" in "melodious" is a better choice. You're not really even selling records, if it's a streaming service, so to focus on that letter seems like you're doing it just for the sake of the logo, which isn't a good reason.

Answer 2

I do not want to be rude. It is a constructive critique.

Inserting text inside the shape like that is a "cheap trick" that mimics an effort to work with text, but does not work.

The image does not work at all on a small size.

You need a more vivid color... Music is emotion, regardless what emotion that is.

This is a simple exercise using the same font you used without a pretentious effect and using also blue. The black has no sense, so I changed it.

I am not saying my example is better, I am saying that you need to pay attention tho those aspects.

Answer 3

blue gradient as it stands for: health, healing, tranquility, understanding, and softness

No one cares.

I don't say that to be mean, but rather to point out that you could have made it green and said the exact same thing. What's important is that the colors work for your purpose aesthetically and strategically, but don't get hung up on 'color meanings'.

The main shape of the logo is made to look like a record with the text bent inside

Two issues with this: 1) it doesn't look like a record 2) it's a streaming service and I'm guessing your target audience likely doesn't know what a record is. Now, I understand the name of the company has 'records' in it, but...that's the kind of thing you as a designer should be sitting down the client about and point out that the name is simply wrong for the product.

Are there any mistakes in terms of elements and composition? (eg,colour)

The aforementioned critique of using the term 'records' aside, the logo doesn't say 'records'. It's just an 'R'. If the company name has the word records in it, you likely need it in the logo.

The gradient seems arbitrary.

The type also seems arbitrary. What was the thinking behind choosing that particular typeface?

Does it relate to the target audience?

I don't know as I don't think you've told us who the target audience is. But again, going back to the 'streaming' service, I think the problem is with using 'records' to begin with--both as a name and a logo.

What could i do to make it better?

Lots but...we really do need more to go on. Can you show us some of the other ideas you tried? A big part of logo design is designing 100 bad logos to find the one good one. Do lots of sketching, lots of brainstorming. Play with some different names. Different typefaces. Different iconography. Explore.