Design Cafe logo project continued from previous page. It might be helpful for you to open the sixteen logo finalists file in another window and follow along...
Designing a Logo for the CAFE
Comments from Design Cafe Listees...
Selected reactions and comments from Cafe Listees, random order, names withheld.
Comment: They're all lovely
Congrats to everybody who submitted a design to the competition. They're all lovely to look at! I -meant- to do one, but as always I end up megamultitasking and the time got completely away from me ... next time!! :)
My thoughts are:
- #8 is very clever, but when I first looked at the thumbnail, I immediately saw the 'cup' part of the design, but had to squint for quite a while before it became obvious what the keys were (maybe I'm having a 'slow' day?!) Maybe it's just too clever? I also discounted it because I preferred the entries that used more colour.
- I liked #2 as well, but in the end I felt it was too chunky or something. I don't have a problem with the cafˇ/coffee part of the name being predominant. I also liked #5 but felt that the URL and the cafˇ were just a little too lost in the contrast with the purple. I also really liked #1 and was very tempted to place it. It was clever in the way the 'D' and the 'mouse' were used, but in the end I felt it was too 'pointy', but that's just a personal preference for curvy things :)
- I really liked #10 and it would have had my first preference, only I thought it was very similar to the Starbucks logo, but I think it would look great anywhere, so it got my second place vote. Third, I put #7. I'm not sure if I could even explain why, I just found it very attractive to look at, although I'd like to see it in some other colours as well.
- My first vote went to #11. I think it's very clean, simple and stylish and the use of the three pantone-like boxes leaves the way to adapt to many variants in terms of website, headed paper, etc.
Great competition. I kept going back and changing my mind over which ones I liked the best! Always a good sign :)
Editor's Note: This writer liked Number 10 because it looks like the Starbucks logo. Well, take a look at this logo which almost made it into the competition, but was discouraged for obvious legal reasons.
Comment: Who is that guy???
Whoever designed #13 is a bit off, in my humble opinion. If they thought that looks like Fred, they're wrong. Fred has lots of hair. If they included the picture of someone else, then that's very bizarre, why would they do that?
IMHO, the CAFE is not about Fred. It's about the rest of us. My 2 cents!
Editor's Note: Right, here's a picture of me when I had a beard.
Comment: Nifty!
Some nifty work there, folks. And impressive for having done it in addition to all those deadlines! These are the 3 strongest to my mind.
I thought #8 was the, by far, most outstanding design. Way smart! I loved the inclusion of the help button. That says it all as far as I'm concerned. I like that it (took me) a split nanosecond to "read" the image of the keys - then I was impressed that it could be read with so much of it missing.
I thought #15, my second choice, brought in the universal element of this group which is a pretty neat aspect of the group, and of the design. I'd suggest perhaps putting the red cup behind the sphere, with the bottom half of the sphere showing the red of the cup. That does present a problem for the words "Design Cafˇ" but that's where I'd begin in tweaking that one.
I thought #2 was a beautiful design but too coffee oriented. For that reason I discounted a lot of the designs. Perhaps play up the word design, using the loop of the D for the cup handle and make cafˇ the smaller word. When I was hoping to get involved with this, I was thinking of bringing in the idea of a cafˇ table to take it away from the feeling that there is a beverage involved. My 2¢.
Comment: Clean Design, Simplicity, Cleverness
This was a tough call. I had selected my favorites by looking at the large design, but when I went to the thumbnails I had to rethink my choices because some of them didn't come across as well when reduced. I didn't consider the embroidery aspect since I don't know enough about it to know what's feasible and what's not.
- My first choice is #11. I like the clean design and the color swatches focus on design rather than java. I think it would look great on a T-shirt or coffee cup!
- Second choice was #5 for similar reasons. I like the simplicity of the design and of course, I like PURPLE! (Magenta?)
- I like the cleverness of #8. I liked that you have to really look closely to see what it is; I REALLY approve of the help button being included, and the discreet little coffee cup that's subtly added. It also emphasizes how connected we all are to our keyboards--and each other. The biggest problem would be in reduction. We might lose the text. But it's pretty small in the thumbnail and I could still read it.
- Designs 1, 6, 7, 12, and 13 were too busy for my taste. Cleverly executed, but too much going on.
- Design 15 almost brought to mind Sherlock Holmes instead of a coffee cup and globe. And the text is pretty hard to read in thumbnail size. Spiffy color combo though.
- I originally liked #4 and #10 until I saw how the colors lost their pizzazz in the smaller versions. They both came across better in T-shirt size.
So now I'll go put in my official vote--knowing that those of you who took the time to design and submit are way ahead of us "slackards" who didn't even enter the race. Thank you for giving us such great designs to choose from!
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