Logo Critique for Exam

Mads Davidsen

Hello,

For my exam I chose to do a visual identity for a place that sells sandwiches. I've been spending much time on the logo, but now I don't know what I am refining anymore. I need someone else to look at it. I think I bit off more than I could do with this (no pun intended). I am happy about the robustness and sturdiness of the 'D'. I am not sure if I've made the 'W' too wide. I feel the 'C' is too narrow, the 'A' is perhaps too light and the 'S'...I don't know. Help!

—Mads

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Is it a Jewish deli?  ;-)
https://www.soyvay.com/

Mads Davidsen

@Hrant H. Papazian
Lol, no. I don't think we even have one around here where I live in Denmark. 

George Thomas

I don't see a problem with anything but the /S. You might try making it more angular, less round. It just looks unbalanced to me.

James Puckett

S doesn’t fit with the overall square theme here. The spaces between SH and EN are too wide.

Ray Larabie

Try increasing the radii of the circles on the right side of the D. There's a range between where it is now and where it spoils the modularity. I recommend pushing it close to the limit to increase its D-ness.

Craig Eliason

The second line has smaller letters, presumably because you see that word as secondary—but I almost think the consequent tracking actually calls more attention to it. How important is the justification?
If you stick with different size letters, consider making the hairlines all the same weight. 

Mads Davidsen

Thank you for your critiques. 

@James Puckett
I agree with you that the S doesn't adhere to the overall square aesthetic. I think it would have been good if I had taken some time to describe the final look I was going for. Sometimes I get tunnel vision with these things that I only focus on the proportions—in this case, that is.

Mads Davidsen

@Craig Eliason
Yes, I was concerned that the hairlines would be even thinner when I scaled down the letters. It is something I will reconsider.

Christian Thalmann

I do not have a design education, so I'm not sure what they're looking for... my layman's impression though:

(1) The overall impression is harsh and aggressive, like they're selling pepper spray or chainsaws rather than sandwiches.

(2) The lettering is a bit harder to read than I'd be comfortable with for a wordmark logo. I feel like it's trying too hard to be interesting.

(3) The logo might have a bit of a cohesion problem with all that whitespace.

Beau Williamson

I think Hrant may have been noticing the strong resemblance of 'N' to 'ﬡ'. My impression too. Maybe tone down the serifs of that letter. I also feel the 'S' is too narrow, or out of character. The wide 'W' I feel is very nice, actually. Avoids the font looking too industrial.

James Puckett

I don’t think the Hebrew similarity is a problem. Most people outside of Israel or NYC probably have no idea what Hebrew looks like.

George Thomas

I just realized your /S is actually an easy fix. Copy the /N, rotate and flip it, then make it more narrow and you'll have your /S, tweak as needed.

Mads Davidsen

@Christian Thalmann
Harsh and aggressive? I've been wondering whether lessening the contrast could help on that. I think the high contrast may contribute to its sharpness.

Mads Davidsen

@George Thomas
Lol, damn it, you're right. I didn't see that.

Mads Davidsen

This is how it looks for now. If it goes well at my exam, and if the customer likes it (she has already told me they weren't really looking for a new logo, but we had to communicate with a business), I'll try to incorporate some of your feedback.

James Puckett

The new S is a huge improvement.

notdef

Måske unngå særskrivning med en bindestreg?

Dette ser kjempefint ut. Elsker ny S! N/W går også veldig fint sammen. Jeg er litt usikker på tverrstreken i H/E. Den ser nå ut som den er sentrert geometrisk, men ikke justert for optikk. Om den bevisst er tenkt stående lavt, burde du 1: overdrive det, og 2: se deg om etter andre hulrom som kan forminskes/forstørres, slik at balansen i resten av bokstavene fremstår utformet etter samme prinsipp. Er forøvrig enig med tidligere kommentarer om at D/O/C/P trenger en litt større radius i buene. 

Vasil Stanev

Nothing in this says '"food" to me. It could be a groovy record shop or a bank trying to look youthful and hip.

Choose less formal and clean shapes. Make the forms more playful, move them up and down the vertical axis, round the edges. Look carefully at well established food logos. Sharp edges communicate cutting your mouth on them. The logo ITSELF has to make you drool. "I wanna bite a chunk out of this logo!"

Redo it all over again.

Mads Davidsen

@Vasil Stanev
Too late to redo it all over again. Also, the logo was never intended to make you drool.

George Thomas

One small thing: on the /S make the lower left corner a sharp corner, not rounded, like the /E and /C. Also consider, on the /S, making the upper left and lower right radius smaller, like the radius on the lower left of the /D. I believe these things will improve it.

Andreas Stötzner

The overall idea and concept is interesting and OK, to say the least. A little bit of strangeness has the potential to become a real asset for the logo’s way into people’s heads.
The S is much more convincing now.
Assymetry of inner spaces of N needs to be solved somehow.
I would probably raise the hor. bars of E and H.
Gaps between serifs and main stroke parts are still to different (S, W).
Some serifs look as beeing too small because of larger white-space surroundings (W, C).

Good luck with your exam!

Craig Eliason

I get a retro sci-fi feeling from the letter style--reminded me of MT Computer at first. 

The verticals read heavier than the other thicks, and thus especially the letters with two vertical stems (DHOP) seem too dark. (Compare HOPP to SAN.)

D could still use more disambiguation (SANOWICH). 

AbrahamLee

Craig Eliason said:

D could still use more disambiguation (SANOWICH). 

I think one of the problems, at least to my eyes, is the rounded bottom left corner. It makes it harder to see the top left sharp corner. So, make the bottom left corner sharp, and maybe make ALL the corners *slightly* serif or reversed ink traps to accentuate the sharp corners.

AbiRasheed

I feel 'S' should be something like [this], it's also slightly wider as it should be and you also get to keep slabs horizontal instead of vertical. Not sure about D though but I threw an example for D in there as well. What you have for D is right but it does fight with O so finding something in between to distinguish the two is ideal, not that people are gonna read this as 'sanowich' because with context it'll be read as sandwich but because this is an exam you'd wanna look at it from different scenarios, a lot of 'what if' scenarios just so you cover ground. 

Cory Maylett

I'd probably make the bottom right corner of the C round instead of square. A square corner makes it look a bit like a G waiting to happen. Come to think of it, I might do the same with the E too. If you do stick with the square corners on those two letters, I might suggest doing it with the S too, and, especially, the bottom left of the D. Overall, I'm not sure I'm following your logic on which corners get which treatment.