Wow. These are pretty awful. Honestly they're worse than I expected. Calling them 1-5 top to bottom, these are thoughts I saw in the first few seconds. You'll have to forgive my slightly cynical at times tone. It's all said with a smile though, if any of these logos were your initial personal ideas no intention of stepping on toes at all, remember it's just my thoughts/ opinions.
#1. The white font is all wrong, it doesn't work with the green APRT at all in size, layout, style, color, contrast or balance. The flag looks like an afterthought and a really shallow brainless attempt to turn a bad logo into a car based bad logo. The green horizontal bar isn't necessary, it only adds visual weight and an extra design element while it makes the white words feel even more separated from the rest of the logo. The font for APRT maybe isn't too bad but the T is too short on the right side making it look stubby compared to the other letters.
#2 That's a little better concept, at least someone could look at that and know it's a car related company in .5 seconds. That car's the first read and a good thing in a way to get those that are interested in cars to stop and read the rest of the logo. The black car has a lot of contrast and is very bold, because of that it holds more visual weight than the company name and overpowers it, that's a big no-no in the design world. The NAME should be the first read/ most powerful/ most important element. If I only get one second to see that on a truck door as I drive by it in traffic all I'll remember is that truck had what appears to be a 'Cuda on it.; Your eye should be drawn from the APRT name then continue to the tag line without stopping. The entire logo should flow from left to right, just like a book, or the design lines of a car which draws the eye front to back. Secondly it should flow from top to bottom when there's a tag line. Viewing things this way is what humans are used to and comfortable with. If you give it a quick look your eyes will go from the car to the tag line name that's also black because they both hold more visual contrast. It shouldn't, in this layout the car, which thankfully is pointed in the right direction, should take the eye, or rather read, directly into APRT. then some other design element with balance and flow should draw the eye down into the tag line.; The lines concept in a logo are sometimes ok but are a bit of a maybe 80s cliche, and an easy cheesy way to add an uneducated and unrelated design element to a plain logo. You have to ask yourself why are they there? Is there a purpose that relates to or helps establish your branding and what your company does or is about? If not, get rid of 'em; The lines also give it less visual weight on the bottom so APRT's just "floating" above the black font. Lines in font are a way of establishing movement so they're almost saying APRT, which represents the company, is a balloon floating away, or maybe it's dissolving? It also subconsciously could illustrate the name, which again is to say the company, doesn't have a solid foundation to stand on. Your logo should more boldly say "We're established and grounded, so you can trust us with your $100K + car. ; Note that the flag is flipped horizontally with it's motion lines in the top instead of the bottom. That's weird, why do that? What's the purpose/ thinking there? It doesn't make any sense when I look at it.; How does such a busy overall design help establish your company? What "story" are all these different elements supposed to tell about you?;
#3. Pardon me for saying but what the yell is that? Certainly not a well balanced, cohesive and good looking design, it's more of a let's throw something together in 5 minutes or less. The car looks like the roof was raised 2". Even if that was exact to scale, lowering the roof would trick the eye and give the logo a smoother, faster looking feel. In this case the parked car and the speeding font don't match in flow and level of motion.; Why on earth do the ends of the car run into and cut off the company's name?? See that little splash of black at the top left corner of the A? The visual and subconscious eye will see that and be drawn to it, it's a distraction that should never be found in a professional design. Same with the tail panel cutting into the A or the hood line into the T. The icon should never
randomly interfere with the company name, that alone tells me the artist hasn't got a clue what good design principles are. Doing this subconsciously tells the reader the car is more important than the company and it just plain looks ugly. Again with the 1987 Chevy pick up stripes on the font cause the flow to go up rather than lead into the tag line.; Personally I'm not a fan of the tag line extending much, if at all beyond the length of the name. The green and white combo just isn't working for me either. They should've shown you the design on a white background too. It'll be that way on paper and in some marketing materials.
#4 Same thoughts as #1. This is a poor derivative of #1 that didn't take much thought just to show you "several different idea samples". The white dingy at the end should maybe be more than one, right now it looks like an after thought with no relation to the design. Typically in design you want to work in odd numbers. For example a 5 star wheel looks better than a 4 star. A 7 spoke wheel looks better than an 8 spoke. A second white dingy would use the T as the first design element, then two white slashes would be 2 & 3. That way it'd be tied together better, have more flow and make more visual sense. It would also feel like the white slashes were that extra length of the T making it balance better with the other letters.; A white slash on the top further deems the green slash underneath unnecessary and makes the logo as a whole cumbersome, heavy and appear disjointed from the tag line.
#5 Hmmm, looks like a piece of clipart stuck in a box with some words typed on an old type writer. That's not a logo, I hope they didn't charge you for that one.
To create a good logo you need to incorporate good elements of design- color, contrast, flow, balance, weight, cohesiveness, psychology, emotion, marketing techniques, etc., etc. Yes, I'm being very picky and a little harsh in my critique but I think the basis of my thoughts above are accurate and a bad logo can ruin a company, or stunt it from it's growth potential. As I said before there's an abundance of computer program jockeys, a lack of good designers, and a real lack of good designers that understand the aftermarket automotive industry. Hopefully what I said makes sense and helps you think about what looks good and why, and what is just simply thrown together with minimal thought like these are. To get a really good high quality logo your best bet is seek out a decent established design firm. You'll pay a whole lot more but consider this is the flag on a pole, first impression for your business and what you stand for.
Some things you should discuss with the designer before they puke out ideas that don't apply-
1. Who is your target market. Based on the name I'll lean towards its likely 40-65 yr olds with deep pockets and high dollar cars. Upper middle class+. They expect respect, trust, and commitment to taking care of their possessions. They're professional and expect a high level of professionalism from you.
2. Based on that market, psychologically your logo shouldn't appeal to a tuner kid or a guy who does Aussie burnouts in the parking lot in his clapped out G-body, or rock crawls over parking stumps with his roller skate looking mall crawler with Monster stickers on the side. Instead your logo should instill being long established, confidence, care and professionalism.
3. Your logo should be clean, easy to read very quickly, and easy to burn into your memory. No guess work or wondering what part of the logo has to do with anything, no one wants to spend the time trying to do that. I think it's cool that the acronym letters of the full company name spell "apart", as in you set yourself apart from competitors by doing a better job.
3. If you get fancy or use icons it should be clean and make sense. For example on the left of this page in CPP's logo I see the letters also as brake lines, a big part of their business. In the Muscle Car Place logo it's clear they sell muscle car stuff without even reading what the letters spell. Vapor Works did a cool play to make their logo fun and look like rising vapors. You get the idea.
4. Everything in the logo HAS to be cohesive and match so it all looks related to each other. Fonts, colors, layout, etc. they have to be one like a Jedi is to the force.
There's more but I've already blabbed more than some people will read, lol. So one final suggestion, your business name is really long. To help shorten it visually and proportionally you could consider saying Auto Performance, Restoration & Transport. That will be just as good as spelling it all out and is actually easier to write and say.
Hope some of all this helps. Good luck!!
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
Logo Wanted
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