My review of $25 logo from gotlogos.com

I like the logo, especially for $25, except for the pointy R. The wavy line looks like a woman lying on her side to me and so might be better for a masseur or a chiropractor, but I still think it’s ok for a personal trainer, especially one with lots of female clients.

From reading this thread I think that the design resulted from incomplete communication between the parties. I don’t think you can blame either party more than the other.

robin

You could have done better. I don’t know why people take the most important part of their marketing — the most important collaterial — their logo and have it made cheaply.

My designer costs and with good reason. She has my business plan, vision of my companies future, my ideal clientp profile, etc. etc. Now that’s just a little of what a good designer asked for and uses in their process.

@ oddb

I like the logo, especially for $25

You have to try and think of the logo REGARDLESS of it’s cost.
People who will see that in a a random place would not know the cost (or would they… ??!!)
If the logo is nice or not should have no relation to it’s actual cost.

Thanks to those who provide an alt view of the logo. To be honest, we are also pre-judged on our efforts as soon as someone says it cost 25.00. It works both ways.

We are often assailed by those in traditional design services who have an obvious grind against us. The thing is we do not compete for their clients…most people who may buy our affordable designs simply could not have budgeted into low or high 3-4 figures.

Also, when we design something it is in an ala carte business model. Meaning if they want to ‘tweak’, it only runs 10.00 for a revision round. We offer discounts on two of our packages for brand new follow-up designs. So even if they have an extra design or two created we are still very affordable for them. I will say that about 80-85 percent of our clients are satisfied with their first iteration.

Ok my turn to have a say on this ?? !

Personally I don’t know much about logo design. But I can say a few things.

1) Every good logo has a meaning
2) Every good logo is easy to remember
3) Every good logo is easily associated to/with its meaning

The logo provided doesn’t fit into any of these categories.

1) It has has some sort of a meaning, “Chris Ranes” Personal trainer etc. but this meaning is not conveyed design-wise (which incidentally, is the point of any good logo)

2) How do we remember things? We associate them with a meaning, a cause, an image, or an experience. Does this logo have any of that? No.

3) Nothing much to say here since it doesn’t have much meaning.

Now I know you could go arguing that this logo cost only $25. But hey, I just proved you wrong, it’s a bad logo, it won’t help him, and he lost 25$ to you.

Judging by your previous replies I don’t think you take criticism lightly. But hey, before you go and bash be with your post and declare me an e-punk, remember that by commenting on your logo i am trying to help you.

Oh just as an interesting fact, Carolyn Davidson designed the now famous Nike “swoosh” logo for $35.

wow “proved you wrong…”

you can’t get a good dinner for $25, but you can certainly eat for $25… he got a logo for $25, did he get a good one? no, the Gordon Ramsay of logo design this guy aint.

Your swoosh argument is a strawman. We can argue all day about how stupid Carolyn was, or we could sit here trying to find your “meaning” in that one, or we could just agree that it wasn’t Carolyn that made the swoosh = nike, it was the several hundred million (or more) in advertising dollars which built the association in your mind.

Again, bullshit designed to lead us away from the point and tie us up in irrelevant stuff = strawman.

…

lets put the argument to rest… I’ll give anyone who posted before me $25 to blow me away with their artistic brilliance and design the guy a much better logo, if you think it’s worth the cash. Please follow his brief as posted.

Clock’s ticking, make it fast the client’s in a hurry… no, I don’t have time for you to go to design school. Best entry gets the prize, I’ll even sweeten it for the losers if they’re better than the original.

I’d be glad for the OP if I’m proven wrong, but don’t expect me to be gentle with my criticism.

Don’t call my teacher ??

I’m currently in school, in class, more specifically in the Computer Science class. We have two periods and this is the 2nd, I’ve just finished all my required work so i’m free to do anything.

I decided to use some clip art we used in school last year, combine it with some text in Adobe Fireworks and create a few logos.

Technically, I’m not allowed to upload stuff via FTP during class, but ah well.

https://webmeba.com/images/chris-ranes.jpg

$25 please. ??

EDIT: i know he wanted to avoid the whole stickman thing, but hey we had some laying around over here so I decided to use them.

EDIT 2: ok here is the second batch.

https://webmeba.com/images/chris-ranes2.jpg

gotta go now…

@elevatingyourbusiness

You could have done better. I don’t know why people take the most important part of their marketing — the most important collaterial — their logo and have it made cheaply.

It’s because they 1) don’t care (marketing in the sense of tying a brand image to their business is not essential in every business, particularly small ones); or 2) because they can’t afford it (not much start up capital or unwilling to invest a lot in an enterprise that has yet to prove its ability to earn money); 3) because even though they have a decent budget and a good reason to market, they just don’t know that much about marketing.

Those are the reasons I’ve encountered working for clients. Small businesses — for good reasons and bad — often don’t value the importance of a logo. It can be very difficult to convince them that spending hundreds to thousands of dollars on a logo that is part of a larging branding strategy is important in terms of growth.

Conversely, a fairly crappy logo in the hands of a skilled marketing team can wind up having nearly universal recognition. Design is very important, and it’s not surprising that designers often tend to think it’s the most important aspect of branding/marketing, but it’s not always so.

My designer costs and with good reason. She has my business plan, vision of my companies future, my ideal clientp profile, etc. etc. Now that’s just a little of what a good designer asked for and uses in their process.

Obviously you have put thought into your marketing strategy and value the ROI of branding your image carefully, and are willing to pay for professional experts to help you develop it.

But not everyone is. A plumber might feel a better investment of his capital is to buy new equipment, hire an assistant, get a new truck, or buy 1 page ads in the yellow pages.

1) Every good logo has a meaning
2) Every good logo is easy to remember
3) Every good logo is easily associated to/with its meaning

I have to say that I disagree with #1 and #3. Being memorable or easily recognized is important, but tying the logo to a specific meaning is not only *not* essential, but often results in a old-fashioned looking logo. (A logo that is too literal. And furthermore, a logo tied to specific meaning may become a handicap when your company decides to expand its product line or services, or change direction altogether.)

Most logos I’ve seen these days (from large corporations) are frequently simple text treatments, or use symbols that are chosen precisely because they *are* meaningless but easily recognizable shapes.

For example, take the logo for CVS. It’s a huge brand, but their logo is simply white letters of a particular font on red.

Or what about American Apparel? You certainly cannot accuse those guys of not having a marketing strategy! And yet their logo is a very plain black text treatment.

There are lots of examples. The logo is just one part of the marketing. The purpose of marketing is to associate the brand with the logo so strongly and so ubiquitously, that when you see the logo you automatically associate it with all the other branding the company has done. The logo doesn’t create the meaning — the whole marketing campaign does, and that’s a long term effect.

You have a point.

But essentially there are two ways of remembering a logo

1) you see it all over the place (ala Coke, CVS, etc.) and therefore you remember it
2) you see it in some place and since the design (or message) is so intriguing, you remember it

For 1 you need, well, tons of money, and a great designer.
For 2, you need a great designer.

Actually, fonts have meanings and associations as well, so even a simple logo like CVS is saying something, as is American Apparel, which is surely making a statement about offering simple, straightforward, unaffected designs. They chose a particular font for their logo for a reason — it’s not comic sans, or century gothic, or times new roman, which would all have very different “meanings.”

all of this hubbub over a logo!!

Ive been going to reply to this thread for a while, so here goes.

The logo is fine. And this:

The wavy line starts off “hilly” and then flattens out towards the end. Perhaps this is symbolic of how you’ll feel after a session with Chris?

The font for “Chris Ranes” is spiky. Is that a comment on his personality? Is he cruel to his students?

made me laugh so hard I almost fell off my red Ikea computer chair.

Seriously, is someone really going to look that hard at that image?? Of course not.

It took someone actually pointing it out to me for me to see the arrow in the fedex logo, for fux sake. ??

The logo is fine. The logo is fine. The logo is fine. The logo is fine.

repeat after me, The logo is fine ??

Webmeba, your inability to follow the brief with your initial design is indicative of the quality of your critical opinions here.

If you can’t follow rules, then you have no business complaining about the designs of those who CAN follow the rules, no matter how stupid you think those rules are.

Naturally, as your first design didn’t follow the brief, it’s disqualified.

Now lets look at the second one.

Here’s yours: https://webmeba.com/images/chris-ranes2.jpg
here’s the original you complained and beat your chest about: https://myfitnesswithchris.com/images/myfitnesswithchris_larger_trans-1.gif

The breakdown:

1) your logo is infinitely more boring than the original, making use of only a very basic sans-serif font and some really poor use of whitespace between your two lines of “design” which could have been done in MS word.

2) what does “ertified” mean? what does “hris” mean? Oh I get it, that big-ass C was supposed to fit with both of them, even though its miles away and doesn’t really flow into either line… I get ya now.

3) Please tell us why the copyright symbol has become your biggest design influence here? Maybe I’m wrong, perhaps you’re just sponsored by the letter C, and the numbers 4 and 6.

4) What does a HUGE letter C have to do with fitness and personal training?

5) The big bold C looks like your attempt at rating your own work Unfortunately it’s quite generous. The OP could have done a better job himself in a word processor. Awful.

Even you would have to admit that your second attempt here is worse than the original.

I do agree that some human figure is called for, albeit cliche, but that wasn’t in the brief. Instead of complaining about the design the guy got for $25, maybe you should be complaining about the OP’s brief?

Anyway, if you want all that money to retire on, you’ll have to do a much better job of a logo than that.

News flash,

I know how to critique logos, I dont know how to design them, i don’t have a degree in design, i’m 15 after all
I designed those logos while in school in around 20 min

I still think they look better than his logo, but that’s my opinion and it’s subjective. As far as I’m concerned you can think whatever you want, and even enjoy it. I love being criticized because in the end it improves your work, however I hate people that criticize work and inject comments criticizing not just the product, but the maker as well.

I love it how you immediately associate the “C” with the copyright symbol – lol, and I really don’t see what you have against “C”‘s.

For $25. WTF do you want? Even the Nike logo cost $400. ?? hahahahahahaha