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RJ, and 2 of his Youngstown State University students, have been working on a site redesign and logo as well. attached is the pdf of examples of a logo, and we’re looking for feedback.
I’ll hold my comments until I hear some of yours.
The demo website will be at http://sclug.youngstowndesignworks.com/, but it probably won’t be viewable until Wednesday sometime.
Thanks to RJ for using his skills and resources to help the LUG!
Any way they can get the SCLUG part to look like a bridge? Any depiction of the city should have a bridge, right..? I really like it, otherwise!
site’s working now. RJ is going to get some content in the forums so we can see what they look like. He’ll also take a look at why I can’t navigate the menu on the iphone.
As for the logo, I think it looks very professional, but perhaps a little too “strict” professional with the gray. Reminds me of a Gotham City vibe. that’s why I prefer the ones on the right with the yellow. Ties in to “black and gold” a little more too.
This might be nit-picky, but I’m thinking, as a branding matter, we don’t want “SCLUG” we want the left to be a stacked “Steel City”, even if it’s smaller text – just to make sure people know who we are. I’m alright with LUG being there, but I’d be fine with it spelled out too. I’m definitely excited at the thought of brickbuilding our logo for displays! Could even go in multiple scales!
Good point on the bridges!!! Maybe we could drop one or two of the less recognizable buildings a fit a bridge on there somehow. Along the lines of not liking the cold gray, if we colored the buildings to their real colors (highmark=tan, USX=brown, etc) and maybe that will help soften the impression.
The only other thing that bugs me is there is more spacing to the left of “SC” than there is at the end of “LUG”. 😉
I like the old design, its already on our banner. The new design might work if you can incorporate this SCLUG:
I’ve held off commenting on this thread because I do this for a living, and I can be pretty annoyingly critical. That being said, I have some feedback 🙂
Logo
- I’m worried about a three-dimensional logo, because I just learned in a meeting about rebranding one of my clients at CMU that 3D logos don’t transfer well to any kind of fabric. So there might be future trouble should we decide to use it on tshirts or something similar. If we don’t have fabric plans and we’re only going to use it on print and electronic materials, it’s not an issue. But I see tshirts in our future, so this gives me pause.
- I’m also concerned with the prominent “SCLUG” as Josh pointed out. It kind of looks like you’d want to pronounce it Sclug, and without the “Steel City LEGO Users Group” with it, an audience unfamiliar with us would be confused. This makes me lean more toward the horizontal banner-style ones where the graphic is a smaller component.
- I felt like the graphic was also very Gothamy and didn’t scream “Pittsburgh” like I hoped it would. Our skyline is great, but as someone else pointed out here, we’re more widely known for three rivers and bridges. Also, can’t we get a brick in there somehow? Are we prohibited from showing them at all?
- Finally, a good logo should be unique, memorable, distinctive and timeless. While what they’ve presented is unique and possibly memorable, I think it’s sort of trendy (with the 3D) and I don’t know if it represents what we’re about.
I think this is a good start, but I’d love to see them do something with a richer gold, play with the idea of rivers or bridges and get away from the Gotham city thing. And maybe incorporate a generic building brick that resembles a LEGO brick. (It’s possible the image was supposed to look like a brick, with buildings being the studs. Ben pointed that out, but it flew over my head and I’m pretty hip to this jive.) I do, however, realize that I am just one person so hey — if you all are cool with this, I’m not going to get my undies in a bunch. Plus I realize this is free. Free is good.
Website
I can’t access the forums page, but I think the web is a step in the right direction, too. I think maybe we can explore a color scheme that matches whatever logo we settle on, which would make the appearance more striking. (Also, it’ll make us look like we have our stuff together, which is an added bonus. I love hobbyist groups that look professional and I think we should aspire to that.) I wonder about the ordering of the top nav — like, should “About” be bumped up before “Forum,” since one attracts newbies and people looking for info, and the other is reserved for people with accounts? Since we read from left to right, we want to make sure the audience sees what they need as quickly as possible. It does still feel a little WordPressy, though, and I’d like to see it have a more unique Steel City LUG identity. I think that can happen once we decide on a logo. At CMU, we’re working with an outside design firm (Wall to Wall — they did Burgatory’s brand!) and when they do logo+web, they do it in that order, because the former will inevitably influence the latter. So that’s something to consider too.
I think I just noticed that the background is LEGO plates, which is a nice touch!
Sooooo….that was a lot longer than maybe it should have been, but I do feel like this is really the one thing where I can contribute. I’m a writer/web content manager by trade and I’m more than willing to help out in this effort any way I can. Even if it’s by being too commenty.
I’ve held off commenting on this thread because I do this for a living
That’s all the more reason to voice your perspective. Of course we all want to avoid offending creators, but precisely stated feedback helps people to improve. Your familiarity with this topic provides valuable insight, so please don’t hesitate to comment.
So when the logo was first proposed I really liked it, and when I mentioned that to Susie she raised some of the objections that she presented here and after thinking about it for awhile, I have to admit that she has some valid points.
I was less concerned at first about whether or not the logo gave people an indication of what we’re about, I just wanted it to look cool. But I see the value in that. I did come up with a whole list of famous logos that give virtually no indication of what they’re about – Target, McDonald’s, Coke, Nike, Flickr, I could go on, but these are all household names, they’re major international companies with widespread appeal to the general public, as well as ones with big advertising budgets. We’re a highly specialized group of a type that most people don’t even know exists, and although people at stuff like PhillyBrickFest are gonna know what we’re about, we’re also interested in promoting ourselves to the general public at things like International Children’s Festival.
I got the ‘buildings as studs’ right away, but I also viewed in the context of knowing exactly what I was looking at and the group it was for (here’s where Susie would sarcasticly say ‘I thought it was just cause you’re smarter than everybody else’ and I would say ‘That too.’). If you showed the logo to random people on the street and said ‘What is this?’ they’re gonna say ‘It’s a bunch of skyscrapers’. They’re pretty much gonna be assuming that the SCLUG part is just on a cross-section of earth below the buildings. I think I can safely bet that not one single person would say ‘Oh yeah it’s totally a Lego brick with buildings as studs’.
So I’m a proponent of working a more obvious Lego brick into the logo. I don’t have to be a lawyer to know that as long as it doesn’t actually say Lego on it, we can pretty much do it.
I also agree that it needs to say Steel City LUG somewhere in the logo. I’m a big fan of the Steel City name (and it’s too late to change it now anyway), but the one drawback is that 99% of people are going to have South Carolina as their first guess for SCLUG. I don’t have a problem putting SCLUG on it in big letters as long as it still sez the full name at the bottom. I guess maybe I thought that was the plan, since this was just a prototype logo, but I would say start putting that in now so we get the full effect and can see what the spacing and font and whatnot is gonna look like.
I’m not entirely sure what ‘3D doesn’t transfer well to fabric’ means. You can transfer anything to fabric. I’m guessing it means that if it’s on a shirt, the lumpy nature of people’s bodies means the image gets distorted and you lose the 3D effect and it just looks like a mess.
I like the Pittsburgh buildings and I like the Gothamy style, but I have to admit that the bridge makes more sense. As a person not originally from here, I can tell you that all those cool buildings that are instantly recognizable to us are not known to anbyody outside southwest PA, unless they watch a lot of baseball on tv.
I hate to complain about free help too, but I’m guessing they knew their first effort might not be accepted as-is. I’ve never met RJ, hopefully he doesn’t already think I’m a bad person.
I haven’t viewed the webpage yet.
the lumpy nature of people’s bodies
I do believe I’m slightly offended.
Thank you all for your feedback. Your concerns are well-founded and have considerable merit. No offense taken on the criticism. My students are taught to take constructive criticism as positive as possible.
Accepting this work because it was pro-bono is neither fair to you, the student, or your audience. If it’s not appropriate, it’s not appropriate, and that’s ok.
I think this experience, collectively, has at the very least enabled constructive conversations on how to proceed forward with any major branding/logo and website design initiatives – clearly, it must be a more concentrated, collaborative group effort with approval from the entire group, not just a committee or officers, etc.
@Ben – I don’t hate you. Thank you for the very specific feedback – I wish more clients gave me details like this.
@Susie – the logo was built first and the site was built second, but isn’t fully fleshed out as we needed feedback on composition, layout, navigation, etc.It is a WordPress site using a free WordPress theme. While this is less than ideal, I would encourage the group to seek out premium-quality themes, other design assets to use that, while they may cost something, will eliminate the basic WordPress look and feel. Thank you for your detailed feedback.
Thanks for revisiting this, RJ. Definitely think we have a good start going, but there’s more that could be done.
I apparently failed to clarify things on the thread last July, but the SCLUG abbreviation is, in my opinion, excellent shorthand for those “in the know”, but should NOT be primary branding, for all the reasons others mention above. “SCLUG” certainly does not roll off the tongue like PennLUG, or DelVaLUG, and doesn’t quite spell an awesome word, either. Really, it’s just for when I’m feeling too lazy to type “Steel City LEGO Users Group” or even “Steel City LUG”. I very much agree that the logo should either read the full name “Steel City LEGO Users Group” or possibly “Steel City LUG” (if we believe the LEGO portion is obvious enough with whatever design we finally adopt.)
Personally, I’m always a fan of black and gold color schemes (but maybe more of a Penguins / Steelers gold than yellow, eh? 😛 ) Not opposed to bridges, either… might take a substantial overhaul to RJ’s original logo ideas to incorporate bridges and more explicit LEGO (non-branded) bricks; but it could be done.
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