Studio Brief 01 - Interim Crit

Today we have had an interim crit in which everyone left their work out with a comments sheet alongside to receive feedback on as everyone walked round and looked at each other's work.

The two design sheets I left out for people to view were my most recent designs, including ones I was considering for my final design (see fig1 & fig2 below). I also asked 4 questions on my feedback sheet -
Upper or lowercase?
Lightening bolt for 'S', 'I' or 'N'?
Loose or tight kerning?
Colours?

fig1.                                                                           fig2.
 

See fig3 below for the feedback I received.

 fig3.

The general consensus for the case of the type was lowercase - everyone who gave me feedback said lower, and someone even stated 'uppercase looks too bold - not friendly'.  This confirmed to me that I am definitely going to have my logotype in lowercase.

The feedback I received for the lightening bolt question was mixed. A large majority of people said 'I', or just one 'I' - but a few people also said no bolt at all. I disagree with the idea of having no bolt at all as I feel like this was the main focus of the design and helped demonstrate the purpose of the company. I was surprised by this but will take it into consideration. Also, I was shocked by the fact no one said 'S', as this was my personal favourite variation. I will definitely need to review this for my final design.

Everyone said to have tight kerning, and a few specifically stated tight but not touching. I received one comment in particular - 'Definitely tight! Tighter kerning suggests faster transmission speed'. I thought this was an interesting idea with a very good point - would tighter kerning give a better impression of my brand to potential customers?

For the colours question, the general opinion was to keep it monochrome/black and white. Someone said this 'looks more professional', which I agree with to an extent. There was a few suggestions for a hint of yellow - I like this idea and feel it could work well without being too over the top. I also had a suggestion of electric blue - this would be interesting to try out and see how it looks.

Overall I felt this crit was very useful - it has given me a few more ideas and definitely made me reconsider my designs. Getting a variety of different opinions has been really informative and will definitely help me refine my ideas.