At the very least it is too detailed to scale well, the shell will be completely lost at smaller sizes turning into a blob of flesh color. The use of desaturated pastels is not a typical choice for a technical project. It is more fit for something soft, girly, perhaps creative. Also there is a disconnect between the name and the symbol. You tell me "Groove", I will remember GrooveShark. You show me the logo and I will have hard time recalling the name it goes with.
And while it is very satisfying to publish the details of design process, it is not that interesting to look at it. Once you saw one or two, you've seen them all... and every self-respecting logo designer now has a couple in a portfolio, so there is plenty of really good sketch logs to choose from.
The bigger question to me was: What does Groove do?
Branding should be about what you want to communicate about the company rather than the decoration process of picking out a color scheme. If you want to understand why this branding isn't working read the mission statement:
"Groove is a hosted customer support and engagement platform that helps companies manage customer support across all types of channels - email, web, livechat, mobile, Twitter and more."
That description sounds slightly vague and long at the same time. What's funny to me is that while the branding is their website does a great job of explaining what they do. So in a sense the logo is holding them back.
By the way if anyone wants to see brilliant logos that were done for the tech industry check out the work of Paul Rand: http://www.paul-rand.com/site/identity/
Logo use on internet at scale is infrequent and colors trump visual metaphor. These colors are distinctive as is the seemingly abstract arrangement of them which is really what counts. The Apple logo has been assailed from day one and contrary to michaelpinto's assertion, a logo never held back anybody....unless you feel the Yahoo logo "Y!" was a self inflicted decisive blow....and how do you construct "slightly vague" and "great job" into whole cloth. Help me here with how any of this matters, if the logo (which will more often then not be a chip on a nav bar) isn't evocative but is none-the-less a distinctive abstract color assemblage?
Snowballing negativity in here, geez. I like it.. and from the look of the shots on the site, I think it works really well with the look of the site and the "softer" quality of the app to be honest..@michaelpinto, many of those logos would be considered stodgy in the software space if they were released today, and have been redesigned since.
> ...not a typical choice for... technical.... It is more... soft, girly, perhaps creative.
Really. Really?? For entirely separate reasons, I'm bothered both by the placement of "technical" and "girly" in opposition and also by "technical" and "creative" in opposition. Yikes.
"Girly" what is that supposed to mean!? I don't find it girly as much as I find it fun, and different from the mess of homogeneous tech and software apps out there, if you must know. Feels approachable to me.
Am I the only one that thinks of the Microsoft collaboration software when they hear "Groove"? That just sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Plus, I didn't see the connection between a conch shell and "groove". I actually couldn't tell it was a shell with the colored lines wrapping it - I couldn't tell what it was.
I am also confused by this. The name of the startup actually appears to be "Groove Networks LLC".
Obviously, there are a lot of Famous Ray's Pizzas and such, but "Groove Networks" seems so oddly specific. Does this startup have some relationship with the original Groove Networks of the early 2000s?
I don't like this logo at all. It's too complicated and feels contrived.
The concept of just the shell was pretty cool, but the three colors doesn't add anything. I don't care what ideation process says, if it's not adding clarity or defining the brand then I'd say it's just complicating things.
Like many others I thought it was an abstract illustration of a heart at first glance, and figured this was a medical devices company or something.. further inspection revealed everything from a boob to part of a toilet as other possibilities.
You almost certainly had too much input into the logo, your process seems to have involved a bunch of bike-shedding gone awry.
It's also difficult to use in B&W, most really good logos can degrade well to a black and white image (nice for letterhead) also I'm still shaking my head on what the shell has to do with "Groove".
I'm really curious what Alex's reaction is to the discussion here. He posted a link to the blog post, so he must be reading it, no?
The comments so far seem pretty negative, and not really for unimportant reasons.
The two main issues I see are: (1) too complicated as well as lacking contrast, so it will not print well on t-shirts, letterhead, and business cards and (2) the logo does not look like a shell without seeing the process that produced it (and in fact looks more like a pig, breast, or heart, all of which are kind of weird).
Were there business or other reasons for ignoring these aspects? Would it be possible to change the logo at this stage if this feedback were convincing?
That guy Alex is probably pumped to see so many trolls logging hours on his thread :) - point "(1)" is simply not true. Tshirts, letterhead, and business cards included. Friend put me onto this thread simply because the trolling was so horrendous, and you guys did not disappoint. Stay strong, troll on.
I had my laptop's screen at a slightly sub-optimal angle, and the shadow on the shell completely disappeared. I could not tell that it was supposed to be anything; it read completely as "three colorful abstract shapes and a larger honky-colored abstract shape". What are those three curvy things supposed to be? I dunno, but they completely ruin any hope of the shell reading as a shell at a quick glance; the silhouette is a completely confusing lump.
I am afraid to say that, in my opinion as a professional artist, this logo needs reworking, rethinking, and possibly even complete replacement.
There's a lot of negativity here, and I'm not in love with the logo (although I like the colors a lot). I just want to thank you for being open enough to draw attention to it and share the process. Visual communication is a skill that gets stronger as you use it, I appreciate posts like these.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with the negative comments. Even if the whole process denotes great consistency and attention to details, it really sounds like a huge amount of energy spent on something that I may consider relevant, but not to that extent.
Also, having seen the logo multiple times, I actually never got it was a shell. Anyway, thanks for sharing.
Why is everyone so negative?! I really like all the designs and seeing your thought process of how you develop an idea.
My favorite is the combination of the type and simple shell design (the one without the pink/blue/green colorway).
It could be cool to introduce color into that design with some sort of ribbon that flows through the type? Maybe even using the same color palette? ...just an idea.
There are some negative comments about the logo (and I agree with some of the posters), so on a more positve note: it's just a logo, a lot of the other things you've done are pure awesome!
At the very least it is too detailed to scale well, the shell will be completely lost at smaller sizes turning into a blob of flesh color. The use of desaturated pastels is not a typical choice for a technical project. It is more fit for something soft, girly, perhaps creative. Also there is a disconnect between the name and the symbol. You tell me "Groove", I will remember GrooveShark. You show me the logo and I will have hard time recalling the name it goes with.
And while it is very satisfying to publish the details of design process, it is not that interesting to look at it. Once you saw one or two, you've seen them all... and every self-respecting logo designer now has a couple in a portfolio, so there is plenty of really good sketch logs to choose from.