Thoughts on my writing group's logo?

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I'm creating a Facebook group for writers where I post helpful advice, tips, inspiring quotes, etc., and also hope that if the group grows, writers can post their own works for critique, share their advice, etc. So basically a writing community within Facebook.

That being said, I named the group, The Writers' Society, and based a logo off of that. I really like the logo, but I've been told it is confusing, and doesn't really make sense in association with writers.

Without explaining my intentions behind the logo, can you guys offer up your honest feedback on it? What do you think it represents? What, at first glance, does it make you think of? Is there anything you like or dislike; anything you would change?

 

Honest feedback? Honest?

Ok.

- Colours are awful. Blood and dirty oil dripping in dull grey is not good.
- Wing & heart symbolism is good. Just a bit polishing the shape of both and it can look excellent - but not with that oil drop.

It's a draft of a good idea but it's not ready.

 

Haha, no worries at all! I totally appreciate the feedback. Yeah, that's definitely not what I was going for at all, so it's good to know it's not quite creating the effect I was hoping for. I had an earlier version where the heart was beige, and looked like parchment paper, and the wing was more abstract and defined, so I might go back and tinker with that one. Thanks so much for the feedback!

 

I kind of guessed that "Wing it! I have an oil leak in my heart." is not exactly what you had in your mind.

The base concept or idea is good. You just need to make several different versions and seek how you can get your message in the logo.

If it was easy, everyone was doing it.

 

My method of determining a good logo is to squint at it. It's very hard to explain why this helps, but anyone that does it doesn't need it explaining.

To that end I think it's a rather weak logo. The wing is too prominent and the overall design is horribly unbalanced.

As for what it says to me, I honestly have no idea. For that reason I think the message is unclear.

 

I get that the black is meant to be ink ("prick us, and we bleed ink"), but the wing is confusing to me. It could represent flights of fancy, and quills cone from wings, but it doesn't convey either clearly. As for the calligraphy, I wouldn't use that style inless I wanted to imply some meaning for the V or X formed in the center of the W.

Look at the best commercial logos, and you'll find additional meaning in the placement of elements. For example, the arced arrow at the bottom of the Amazon logo both forms a smile of customer satisfaction, and also connects the A and the Z (whatever you want, from A to Z). And after all, as writers, we should be masters of multiple layers of meaning.

On the plus side, your design is geometrically simple, with three bold "colors" (I'm not counting the background as part of the logo), so it isn't overly busy. Iff there is meaning to the three long and three short featgers making up the wing, I'm missing it, nor can I decide if there is a reason the wing is detached from the heart, or why there is only the one wing. Some design choices can have reasons that require deeper knowledge of the represented entity to understand.

 

Problem is I'm biased. I dislike 'fun' logos a lot. I much prefer clean, clinical and minimalistic logos.

 

Personally, it reminds me of a cheap rock band album cover, or something on those lines (I don't listen to rock ok, so it's more of how I think of it as opposed to it actually resembling any rock music type image)

As a writer, I don't see how your logo connects with writing. If I hadn't known, I just wouldn't have guessed. Since I do know, I'd guess the wing was meant to be a quill. Bleeding hearts, ink for writing I guess. However, your choice of lines/contours gives it a very "comic sans" effect, and comic sans is almost universally known as the amateur font style lol and much hated outside of anything used for little kids. It has fat, clumsy, round lines/shapes. It's lacking that swiftness of thought and elegance I associate with writing - or at least, what I love about writing. Nor is it particularly creative. In a sense, the image is pretty cheap - every meaning the image carries is very shallow. Heart for bleeding heart, ink drop for writing/ink, wing for quill/writing. What are the layers, the nuance, the double meanings? It's not symbolism if everything's just direct.

As an artist (I teach art at my school and while I'm not trained officially, I've been doing art all my life), the colours are awful. As someone who studied Art History, yours does not provoke any particular thought or reaction and there're, like I've mentioned, no layers to read between.

I'm not graphic designer, but my gut would say: go a little more abstract. Shredded paper set in a near-random geometric pattern, set in simple black and white. Printed text breaking up, perhaps the word "Writers" as the letters disintegrate. My thinking isn't "pure" enough - I'm still thinking of readymade symbols and objects myself, but the graphic designer should go deeper. You're wanting to break down existing symbolism and recreate something with meaning that alludes to what you want to represent. You want to find the essence of what you're trying to communicate and you don't do that by picking up existing symbols, per se. Think metaphor.

 

To me the messaging of the logo says, "The pen (quil) is detached from the heart"...which is not the message I'd want a writers' group to convey.

You have too many ideas in one logo: the heart, the bleeding ink, and the wing that's not connected. Kill one of the ideas. I'd put the wing on the chopping block, but if that's one of the elements you decide to keep, integrate it.

 

Alright, so I took all of your considerations to heart and came up with this. There's more detail in this version and it's a bit more abstract. And there's less color too (no red!). A lot of you mentioned not liking the gray, but as Cogito said, it's actually just the background -not part of the logo. The logo will be placed over a variety of different backgrounds, so just think of the gray as a placeholder. I also added the name of the group for clarity.

As for the meaning behind the design, it was supposed to represent two things, the main one being: Writers write from their hearts, hence the "quill" taking ink from the heart/writing on it. And two: writing makes our hearts happy, hence the heart "taking flight" with its wing. But I didn't expect everyone to know that, so I assumed it'd be more of an interpretive thing, like each person gives it it's own meaning. I probably don't plan on revising the design in terms of having a more clever meaning as of now, it isn't meant to be too philosophical

Anyway, I definitely think I'm heading in the right direction, but do let me know if you guys like this version better or not? I'm crossing my fingers it's not worse. Haha

 

Kill the wing. It's redundant. We know the ink came from a pen (quill = wing).

 

The wing and the script makes it look like a cheap tattoo from the mid 90's.

 

Dap makes a really good point. The reason so many of those 90s tattoos sucked is because people saved up their money for their "once in a lifetime tattoo" and tried to put every idea they ever had into one damn tatoo.

Logos should be clean and clear, like good editing. You have a lot of redundancy: You have script in two different places. AND ink. AND the wing, which would be the source of a quill pen.

I'll bet if you killed the wing--look at your monitor with your hand blocking out the wing. See how much better it is already?

--and removed the script from the inside of the heart, leaving the dripping ink element as is, you'd have a very nice logo that communicates that you're writers whose hearts bleed ink.

Think of logos as edited communication, rather than as a picture.

 

Still looks like a band logo. The wing is killing it.

 

Or worse

 

My first impression was a diseased heart. I have to read the logo to understand it.

 

Well you asked for honesty so I hope you can accept it. Bear in mind this is only my opinion.

The first wasn't very good. This new one is beyond awful.

Logo design isn't easy. My advice would be to search the web for free logos and go from there.

 

I came up with this in seconds, using a free logo designer. It's not free, of course, as it tries to charge you for the finished product, but there's always that 'Print Screen' button



https://www.freelogodesign.org/

 

I try be helpful.

 

Um no, the severed heart and black dripping ink convey a negative image.

What about forming your heart out of TWS in black calligraphic font with the quill wing starting/trailing it?

 

Thanks for the inspiration, CT.