

YC News Advice Needed: Logo redesigned - gibsonf1
http://www.streamfocus.com
Based on previous YC comments and others, we've redesigned the logo and would appreciate your thoughts on it, good or bad.  :)
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dcurtis
I think the typeface you used is pretty bad, and the line that comes out of
the "o" seems unclean when it terminates on the left side; I would suggest you
remove the line and dot altogether, and use a thicker, simpler font.

Also, and I mean this with the utmost respect for what you do, but those
colors are hideously bad. The background is too bright and distracts from the
content, and purple is just genuinely a washed out and hard-to-read color.

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vlad
I was going to write that you should just hire a graphics designer so you can
focus on your startup, but I think the biggest point is that you are
targetting the wrong people.

~~~
gibsonf1
We're asking for advice from as many areas as we can, but we tend to get great
feedback here as the YCers tend to pay more attention to design than others.
We probably will hire a graphic designer at some point, but its much cheaper
to spend a few hours ourselves (and I am an architect with distinct ideas
about design) than put our money in a graphic designer at the moment as we are
bootstrappers. I think our next major expense will be lawyers.

~~~
vlad
(Before the edit, you had asked me to say what I thought was wrong, so since I
already typed this list out, here it is.)

Again, please don't think I'm insulting your intelligence or programming
skills when I critique it..

1) Way too big

2) Created in Photoshop or GIMP, which are for photo editing

3) By an amateur

4) No kerning adjustment has been made

5) Saved as a JPG instead of a GIF, with artifacts

6) Won't resize properly even if it was the perfect logo because it's not a
vector image

7) You took both words and made them look like what each word is. As if 1-6
didn't make it look amateur already, this does it even more.

8) There is no ... what's the word I'm looking for.. cohesion between the
meaning. I guess there is no... focus. Yes, there are lines connecting the two
words but there is no cohesion between the meaning.

9) One color in an already amateur-looking logo signals the person is even
more of an amateur.

10) The color was popular in 1997.

11) If not amateur, then it looks cheap and makes the company look cheap.

12) Not something you could fix.

13) The kerning issue, though already mentioned, keeps jumping out on me.

14) The bar by the S doesn't even go smoothly into the S.

15) The dot in the word Focus makes me feel like we're talking about contact
lenses.

16) Why? Because you literally used no creativity and went with the gut
instinct to choose a font that looks like the Focus-brand logo shown on
Television (maybe subconsciously) without thinking about what it should look
like in terms of a project management software.
[http://www.us.cibavision.com/lenses/focus_dailies/progressiv...](http://www.us.cibavision.com/lenses/focus_dailies/progressives.shtml)

You should pay somebody with graphical design experience $50 to create any
type of logo in 10 minutes.

It won't be so great you will use it all your life (though you might), but at
the very least, I'm confident it won't look 'cheap' if the designer has any
experience. Your goal here is not to spend $5,000 on a perfect logo... But
some small amount on a logo that doesn't look CHEAP.

~~~
gibsonf1
Thank you very much Vlad for taking the time to comment so thoroughly.

4\. The kerning point is a good one - we'll work on that. 5\. The original is
photoshop text (scalable), but saved as jpg because the gif with transparency
had terrible aliasing.

8\. Hmm, this one I don't know how to respond to as you object to using
meaning for the fonts. Facebook and Google, do they have cohesion between the
meaning? 9\. One color fonts are used a lot in logos. (Our prior version had 2
colors) 11\. Cheap is definitely bad. 12\. Hmm 13\. The kerning is easy to fix
14\. We are fixing that 15\. ok 16\. I had no idea about the focus-brand logo.
The Ottawa font is my favorite font - I use it for all of my firm's
correspondence. I found it in 1995 actually - it is beautiful and very easy to
read. The font used for the Focus brand logo is quite different - definitely
not as elegant as Ottawa.

~~~
bls
Don't use purple unless you want a strong association with Sun Microsystems.
The Favicon doesn't match the logo. The website looks like a weblog--that is
not a good thing.

Honestly, there are a lot of problems with the site design. I am not a
designer so I can't offer anything constructive. You need some professional
help.

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euccastro
Two examples of logos designed by successful companies with names made by
joining two words:

<http://microsoft.com> <http://facebook.com>

Note how much effort has been put in differentiating the style of the two
words. If you find good counterexamples, let me know.

~~~
gibsonf1
Its a good point - and I've been thinking that my over symbolizing of the
words may be the wrong approach. It's definitely important that the name of
the company can be thought of as a single unit.

~~~
euccastro
I'd even suggest changing the name to Streamfocus (lowercase f).

Another thing you won't be seeing much in good logos is graphic tricks
embedded in the text. Zero is best, one is acceptable if it's well done, but
best avoided if you're unsure. More than that and you're probably looking
silly.

The only graphic addition in your logo that I don't fully dislike is the dot
in the O, but it doesn't fit well there since the inner edge of the O is not
round, but elliptical. If you want the dot you should change the O, and I
don't think it's worth it.

My advice is: just pick a font you like, render the name in a program that
does kerning and antialiasing right, and move on to other stuff. A logo won't
turn corporate customers away by looking boring; looking cheap is the most
serious danger.

[Edit: And I agree with vlad it's too big.]

~~~
pg
I agree. You'd be better off just using a single typeface. Works for Apple.

~~~
gibsonf1
We are finished now - one typeface but bold on stream with a subtle graphic.
Back to coding :)

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thomasswift
I think its pretty good, I like the different fonts. The lead-in tail of the
'S' looks to have one or two more pixels then the actual lower part of the
'S'.

The 'O' - While it does look kinda like a nipple, it also is a designy(word?)
way of a target, bullseye or focus point - so I get that and I like that.

~~~
gibsonf1
Thanks - we'll fix that lead-in tail. Maybe having a slight "sexual"
connotation for the women focused isn't such a bad thing? :)

~~~
gibsonf1
We converted the tail into a subtle line that ends in the focus dot - sort of
like a pan and click (on the focused item - which is part of our interface
actually on the system)

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danielha
I haven't seen the old logo, but this is what I think from seeing this current
one.

\- The dot in the "O" sort of looks like a nipple.

\- I think both words should be in the same typeface. You could still
italicize the first word or style it however. The extended "F" from Focus
works well.

\- The lead-in "tail" of the S (lead-in tail? does that make sense?) needs to
be reworked so it fits in.

~~~
gibsonf1
You're the second person to make the nipple comment - you definitely have your
mind in the right place :)

For the typeface, I'm trying to hint at the meaning of the ideas with the
words - which may be a mistake. The stream being more "fluid" and wider, the
focus being precise. We'll try it with the same font to see how it looks too.

Good point on the lead in tail - that is a problem with the font - but I will
definitely fix that.

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ph0rque
Personally, I liked the wavy stream in the old logo better, but it's nothing I
can justify; I just did. :~)

~~~
gibsonf1
:) - that version was definitely more fun.

The reason for the change was to be a little less playful and a little more
serious. The stream symbol on the old version was a meandering stream, now we
have a fast stream - the idea being that our application helps you work a lot
faster and smarter.

~~~
bls
I have trouble envisioning a stream that is not slow and meandering. When a
stream becomes fast, people stop calling it a stream.

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gibsonf1
Based on past feedback from YC news and others, we've redesigned the logo and
would really appreciate your feedback good or bad :)

Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34741>

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gibsonf1
Thank you all for the great comments! What we have now is so much better than
our earlier versions.

