Photography Logo. ADVICE?!

[rmwphotography]

Hii I'm new here and this is my first Thread Post..

Okay so I'm having a hard time deciding what to go with in my design I've created.
anyone with good knowledge on creating logos or just anyone with great advice I could really use your help in knowing what to add, keep or delete in my design.

[OsmosisStudios]

Its too complicated and I cant read it. There.

The font you've chosen for the "RMW" portion is useless. It's fine for a SINGLE letter (like you would use for the beginning of a story or some such) but not for several in a row. I dont understand all the curly bits on the R or M, so much so that they look poorly grafted on (especially the M). The descending curly bit that cuts through "PHOTOGRAPHY" has to go, at the very least.

Speaking of which, the W clips the A below it, and the R is clipped by the curly from the M.

The black pattern stuff does nothing except add more to the confusion, and the reflections on both examples need work because right now they're totally non-sensical.

/GraphicDesigner.

[Jim Bryant]

the script type fonts are really confusing to read, especially this style.

[SusanH1970]

Agreed that it's way too busy and confusing. At first I thought it said "army photography", then I realized it didn't...I actually didn't realize it was "RMW" till Adam pointed it out.

[Izzy]

Simplicity is key.

At this scale I can barely make out what it was supposed to say. I am guessing on letterhead this would turn into little more than a flourish. You must consider all of its uses.

1. Successful logos are simple and easy to recognize. Even if Pepsi does not show you anymore than the circle you know what it is. This is also in part to billions being spent on its proliferation and branding. But on the rawest sense it is simple which is why it works.

2. Scale. Logos must be able to scale back and forth. Even if you only can think of 2 scales you need it at now you will need others later. Should you ever want to put it on a vehicle, billboard, biz card, etc that logo had better scale.

3. I would hope you are doing this in vectored art because as you scale it in peg,tiff,png or whatever it will blob. Artwork must be done in a vectored format or the sign company and so on will charge you to redraw it for you and this work comes at a serious premium. When I did logo design for small businesses I would have to guess I would have billed you about 5 hours without the reflection. Bad enough they will charge you for going from *.ai to Flexi-sign for the conversion.

4. With a logo you have about 1 second to set in your customers mind who you are. If you can not do it within that second they will move on and your logo will be forgotten. This logo took more than 5 seconds to figure out what it said.

5. Editors and customers are impatient people. If you can not cut to the chase in a speedy fashion then they will automatically feel that you will waste their time with the interest of form over function. Yes people want nice pictures but they don't want to think that you spend more time fussing than working.

Lastly a logo design is a mix of marketing, advertising, psychology, sociology, economics, and art. There is a reason these guys make the money they do. Insert pro photog and amateur comparison here.

I have been formally trained in making such designs (I don't do it for anyone anymore because people piss me off ). But on the short there is much more to a logo than just a pretty picture. I refuse to invest the time for my own pics which is why my watermark is just a simple font that can be easily read with my name on it. Nobody cares about how pretty your logo is, they only care about if they can read it and this caring stops in 1 second flat.

[Peter Ahrens]

My advice is to simplify the logo. It was very difficult to read what the logo actually said, so perhaps choosing a simpler, more easy-to-read font would help.

I would not have shadows and reflections because that makes the logo look more cheap. It may seem fancy when you are designing it, but the best logos are very simple.

[Photologyst]

As a designer I can tell you that with logos the KISS principle always applies.

Keep it simple!

[NicoleScraps]

+1 with everything said so far. It is too flourishy, so much that I didn't really know what it said until I read down the thread.

[LMAshton]

Agreed with everyone else. I didn't have a clue what it was supposed to say until I'd read other people's responses.

[milosmom]

agree.. to confusing, i actually went back to your username to figure out it was RMW i thought there was a G or a P inbetween the M & W..