3 ms·

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 th

by vlad 19y ago

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 19y ago
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 19y ago
  (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/progressives.shtml http://www.us.cibavision.com/lenses/focus_dailies/progressiv... 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 19y ago
    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 19y ago
      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.
  - gibsonf1 19y ago
    Thanks again Vlad - we've just completely redesigned the logo and its up now. Back to coding

by vlad 19y ago

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 19y ago

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 19y ago
(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/progressives.shtml http://www.us.cibavision.com/lenses/focus_dailies/progressiv... 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 19y ago
  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 19y ago
    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.
- gibsonf1 19y ago
  Thanks again Vlad - we've just completely redesigned the logo and its up now. Back to coding