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4 Responses to “Logo Design Review: Bay View Builders”

1. Max Says:
   October 17th, 2007

   Disclaimer–I’ve just started dabbling in design with any seriousness myself, so take my comments with a grain of salt compared to those of the experts around here.

   I like the houses in the logo, I think the simple outlines scan quickly and cleanly. However, the big black heart of the sun doesn’t work for me. I don’t like the way it intersects with the closed outlines of the house, and the black circle in the center doesn’t make sense. Also, the font looks dated (like late ’80s) and I’m not sure the text needs to be staggered like it is.

   There’s room for improvement here, but overall it’s not a bad starting point at all.

2. Tanner Christensen Says:
   October 17th, 2007

   Hi Steve, thanks for posting your logo for a critique.

   I first want to apologize for such a long post. There are a lot of points I’d like to make to help you out, and if you take the time to read each of them I think you will not be disappointed.

   My first thoughts with this logo is that you took some clipart and added some text next to it. While clipart logos can work very well for business, you’ll have to do a little more than this.

   Chuck Green has a superb tutorial on how to take your original logo idea and turn it into something really great. Unfortunately, at the time of this posting the link isn’t working; but I’ve contacted Chuck and he should be fixing the problem immediately. You can view his tutorial here:

   http://www.ideabook.com/tutorials/marketing_pr/stepbystep_logo.html

   The main problem I see with this logo is that it’s old fashioned, out-dated, too bland. By adding some unique colors or dimensions to the logo you can easily make it 10x better.

   Instead of having two house outlines and a sun, try having just one house - possibly casting a shadow to signify a sun being somewhere in the sky.

   The clipart image isn’t the only problem with the logo however. A more professional font would also make the logo look better. The current font has a “bubble” and fun feeling to it, not a “professional builders” feel. Try something slimmer and with serifs to create a professional feeling for potential clients.

   Finally, the flow of the logo is everywhere. Imagine scaling the logo down to the size of a stamp on stationery. You can easily fix this by doing a few things: either make all of the text appear on one line, either below or next to the image. Or place each word above one another.

   Good luck on future revisions Steve. The creativity is definitely there, but a few tweaks would really help turn this into a great logo.

3. Panel Expert - Paul Browning Says:
   October 18th, 2007

   If you’re going to use clip-art, you at least have to use text that matches the graphic, so it doesn’t LOOK like you used clip-art.

   And the sun’s gotta go.

   The text at a diagonal like that creates a strange shape. Look at the entire shape of the logo. Where is the base? At the bottom of “builders” or at the base of the graphic?

   I would start again from scratch. Sorry.

4. aaron Says:
   October 24th, 2007

   Steve, not a bad start really, at least you tried some non-traditional stuff such as breaking the text up into 3 separate lines. The clip-art is the real deal-breaker though. Not everyone can recognize great design, however everyone CAN recognize clip-art. I think clip-art screams ‘Just trying to make-do with my new business!’ Check out the podcast portion of this site, it looks like paul took your logo to heart and did a nice little remake.

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