What seems off is the size of the word “FAST” compared to the compass. Unfortunately, there is nothing to bring the logo together. The word “FAST” It far too prominent and dominates the logo. The colour pallet they have suggested is actually a good one. Keep the current red and go with a darker blue. No pun intended here but use a navy blue for the compass. Revers the compass using the Navy blue and white. The background in the centre of the logo, where you have the yellow (colour #3), use the Navy blue. Where you have the light blue, use white and where you have your mid tone blue use a screen of Navy blue at 50% or 60%. Remove the tile-esk edges on the circle and maybe work with placing the North (N), South (S), North East (NE) etc. out side that circle and relative to the compass. For the “FAST” text I would break it up so it looks like F.A.S.T. (sumilar to other military identities). Revers locations of the Fast text and place it behind the compass so the compass becomes front and centre and diminishes the power of the FAST text.
This logo actually uses 4 colours to reproduce - Black, Blue, Rad, Yellow.

Over all You have a really good design here. It has a lot of potential. Good luck!

Patrick Davis Provisional R.G.D.
Owner / Senior Designer
Nexus Communication & Design

Something like this, perhaps?

i would avoid the clash between the 2 elements. Or, if you want to mix them, try to make them complementar to each other

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www.nunocoelho.com

I wonder if what might be seen as a clash is the color variation. I mean in the word FAST the shift from highlight to shadow is much less dramatic than it is in the star. It is almost as if the lighting is different for both.

I wonder if what might be seen as a clash is the color variation.

This might be true. I’ve already shown versions of just the logotype with these reds, so, I should probably try and match the value better in the blues.

How bout these blues:

Simplified even more so, the star now matches the chisel style of the letter better.

The top works more than the bottom for me. Having the gray outline (bottom) come in front of the dot in between AS seems wrong. Dimensionally I mean.

Although the black strokes widths should be uniform, no? The strokes on the star are too heavy. Again this gives the appearance of the star being in front when it is actually behind.

Could you integrate the compass into the ’A’? Instead of it being in the middle of the word, maybe integrate it into the negative space of the A instead? That would allow the compass to a) be smaller and b) align with the slant of the type. Just a thought.

I think spacing it more with the periods doesn’t help. It now reads less as ’FAST’ and more as F A...S T...which doesn’t feel ’as fast’.

integrate it into the negative space of the A

Sorry Darrel, I don’t understand.

Asvetic:

Here’s a really quick (albeit ugly) sketch. Hopefully it illustrates what I was trying to get across:

Like this:

I think the basic structure is much better now, you had too much noise.

btw it reminds me of the GI Joe logo

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www.nunocoelho.com

btw it reminds me of the GI Joe logo

I grew up on G.I.Joe, so it’s possible I was influenced subconsciously.

It’s a very aggressive style for a logo. I’m still not sure I’m all the happy with it. Considering the time constraints I was under, it’s pretty good.

Government logos have been looking increasingly toy-like for a while. I prefer a classic look for them. Oddly though I think the new look is more classic - probably because it is simpler and more robust. To make it even more classic I might try dropping the shading on the letters, and loosing the italic for both the star & the letters.

Eben, something like this?

I have a concept that may work for you in this situation. If you could send me your email I will send my concept to you. With out knowing the entire brief the navy gave you, coming up with an answer is a little difficult. Here is my email: ac-(pdavis@nexuscd.com). Ignore the ac-.

Hey Asvetic, without reading all the posts above me, here are my comments on the original logo: from first glance I thought it was for a company called fast, and I didn’t understand the compass symbol at all, or the choice of colors. After reading your description I understood a little better what you were trying for, but I don’t think you’ve hit the mark.

Color:
There are eight colors in the first draft. Get that down to three. Red and blue is a perfect color palette for the navy, but make sure you choose the right red and the right blue. I’d choose colors that remind people of the American flag... a dark navy blue throughout with a crimson red as a highlight. Use navy instead of black.

Shape:
I like the compass idea, but I’m think the actual shape needs to be less complex. Is the circle behind it necessary? At least the lines can definitely go. The shape needs to be bigger than the text.

Text:
You were right to use a serif font, but I don’t like the size, the weight, or the angle of the text. Keep the text small (it doesn’t mean much, just an abbreviation), decrease the weight, and drop the italics. Also, and this is key, either greatly increase the letter spacing or add punctuation to denote it as an abbreviation. Maybe do both. Alternatively I suppose you could include the entire name, Fleet Assistance and Shipboard Training.

Simplify, clarify and refine the focus. Overall I think you’re moving it in the correct direction.

Yes that’s closer. The star could retain the more simple shape as well. The elements are still fighting in this version. I suspect that the best way for me explain is to sketch it & scan it. I will see if I can do that this evening.

Use the dimentional look for the compass. Leave the type plain

I am a friend of reduction when it comes to logotypes, among other things because a smaller number of elements will give the logo a higher stability, especially in small sizes. So I’ve made a few sketches to show what I’d do:

When I start on a logo, I usually work out the shape in black and white only. When I am satisfied with the built, changing colors is done in a matter of minutes.

I thought it might be a good idea to simplify the star a little, so as to make it easier to harmonize it with the type. Then I tried to integrate the star into the letters. Sadly, doesn’t work for me. The S clashes horribly with the star and because it is so heavy what little there was of white space inside is now covered by the star.

Next try: letters underneath the star. Still keeping the symmetry of the whole thing, the downward motion of the letters towards the center of the star is not so great. Weights of the image vs the textharmonize better already, though. On another thought, I would leave the embossing idea in favor of using–not sure whether that is the right term for it– inlined or engraved font. I tried to get the effect in the sketch, but I’m not sure whether it comes across. Something like this one: http://www.itcfonts.com/fonts/detail.htm?pid=203725

Finally, I placed the letters above the star. I like the upward motion towards the middle, the weight also seems to be more equally distributed. This version also offers the possibility of adding the companies whole name to the logo, which is something almost all of my customers have insisted upon.

Hope this helps.

Benjamin, that is definitely the sort of thing I had in mind. Classic Simple & Strong. Thanks!

Solid stuff as usual, Benjamin, and looking appropriate to the task at hand.

Best regards,
Richard

P.S. Your piece for “Flaming Skull Hairdressers” is a gem.

Glad you like it, Eben! After reading tech notes on font creation for six hours–though it felt considerably longer than that–getting away for a couple of minutes to do a little sketching was actually quite enjoyable.

I’m looking to forward to seeing the finished piece–if Andrew will find the time to post it. That’d be great. I am always curious to see how a design turns out in the end.

Richard: you’re the first person to actually like that thing. I am very flattered. ^_^

Geez guys, you’ve all been really helpful. Alas, it pains me to say that I’ve been taken off the project. It’s being shipped down to corporate’s design team and out of my hands. My manager got a bit overzealous and went over the acting proposal manager when he gave me the work. It’s a mixed bag, for one I was extremely stressed with the deadline and lack on input, but I hate being refused a job I’m quite capable of doing. At least the stress is off me for the time being.

They’re going to pass my ideas along to the design team and that’s about the last I’ll see of this project. If I do get my hands on their efforts, I’ll be sure to share it. But, please don’t hold your breath, I don’t know if I’ll have access to it or not. Chances are, I will.

P.S. the proposal manager is an ass.

that sucked.. :\

just hope they dont steal Benjamin’s sketches lol

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www.nunocoelho.com

Definitely. I guess we’ll all find out together, cause as soon as I know, I’ll be sharing.

Eek!

Well as promised, here is the version that corporate came up with:

Normal:

And Gold:

Well my eek looks out of context now.
So I’ll say it again...

Eek!

It was a mistake to take you off the project!

Come from working in a corporate environment, you can totally tell someone from upper management was responsible for this.

I’ve surprised that didn’t try to fit an anchor, a rope, a gun, etc... in their—they have everything else...

No way - this is a much better logo. See, it represents everything - the world, the ocean, boats, helicopters, planes, and people, both male and female. Plus, they were able to incorporate the slogan into the logo.

If only they could have fit a few more pictures into it to represent some more stuff :-P

- Lex

...and that looks like blood coming out of the water.

oh man. yea, that looks like every logo ever made by every government agency. “Can you make sure the log has at least a dozen literal icons in it!?”

I’m struggling to figure out what the blob above the ship is.

You know what I like, I like Havarti cheese on a Pretzel roll! Yummy.

But, I digress, and thank you all for the kind words of hatred. I know most of you are biased and secretly love it, but you’re worried I’m going to be offended if you say otherwise. Don’t be. I know that corporate spent exactly one week coming up with this humdinger of a logo and truth be told, it’s fantastic. Fantastic in the sense of science-fiction. But then again, I didn’t go to military logo camp, so this monstrosity is beyond my comprehension.

Darrel, that’s a jet, I think and Mike, that’s the blood of our fallen comrades. Support our Troops.

Anyway, it’s still early. I’ll probably tweak the crap out of this in the future and slowly get my way. Time will only tell.

Until then, please lambaste this with cutting criticism that you’ve saved for your worst clients. To death even!

I hope I didn’t come off as bitter or anything.

Nah, dude. We’ve all been there before. Just make sure you get paid and everything will be fine.

- Lex

It looks like a painted bowling ball sitting on a custom made plastic pedestal. Classy, I tell ya, classy!!

Sharon

And I think Darrel was referring to the blob next to the people, not the jet. I just assumed it was a dripping severed hand holding a boomerang.

- Lex

Oh yeah! I don’t know what that is.

That’s a hair dryer. That’s why that closest guy’s hair is blowing upwards.

OK, everyone toss in a dollar to guess the mystery blob. Winner take all!

I’m thinking it’s a Fried Egg.

With the “globe” background, the people and the blob almost look like a continent w/ an island...

Oh I know what that is, it’s the head of a Zombie Space Marine.

I think it’s a heart with a couple of arteries sticking out of it...a big zombie space marine’s heart.

hahahaha.

love to see this produced at small sizes.

—————
Paul Ducco
Graphic Design

sad, sad, sad.

But on an up-note, I’m sure this thing would look swell in a PowerPoint presentation surrounded by performance graphs and marketing speak.

USA #1!

This makes my heart hurt for little children. Don’t ask me why. Just does.

—
Nick Hladek

love it! But i think it could take more elements :)

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www.nunocoelho.com

Well, at first I thought it was a hairdryer, too, but then I realized that it really is the smoke cloud from the crash of the Harrier-Jet that has been in the picture only seconds before. The people on the right are merely spectators of an airshow. An airshow taking place on board of an aircraft carrier, it seems. An aircraft carrier that has just run over a school of baby seals, too.

I finally got it all figured out!

The airshows are supposed to draw in new recruits, that’s why they multiply the forces. I see see it all so clearly now. ^^

Then again, this thing is not beyond hope, I’m sure you can still make somthing good of it, Andrew (probably by deleting 50% of what makes it up right now). Best of wishes.