A few ways to simplify logo design: 5 fresh examples we made

Roman Lemov

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Logomachine

5 min readJul 10, 2017

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We have a theme going on in our community — #logomachine_help. People send us their logos and we fix them!

We are giving out advices for free on design to everyone who needs it (if we think that the project really needs it). Here are 5 fresh examples from past month!

1. FOTO FAST: getting rid of the stroke.

FOTO FAST is a small photo studio from Saint-Petersburg. They reached out to us asking is there is something we can do. Let’s get into this!

Erasing this black heavy stroke, picking contrast colors — white and green. Now there is no need for the stroke — colors work fine without it. We also suggest FOTO FAST using that dynamic identity:

This is what FOTO FAST sign could look like, day and night time:

Overall:

Logo is looking a lot more morden now, name of the brand is easier to read.
Although, it might be too modern for a small photo studio.

2. CLOBY: adding “softness”

CLOBY is an atelier which makes clothes based on children’s drawings.
The problem is almost the same as with FOTO FAST: black stroke that doesn’t add anything to the logo, but ruins the soft and friendly mood of the company.

So we kicked off the stroke again, made crayon drawing effect stronger, and added some soft pastel colors:

One of the main branded carriers for “CLOBY” — a box for clothes packaging. Let’s try our new logo on it:

A star could be a good “visual hammer”, like here:

Easy way to brand your stuff — put a “visual hammer” on it

Overall:

Logo is now a lot more soft and playful!
Although, it’s readability went down without the stroke. Plus, new letter “B” probably should be reworked.

3. Orion: modernization

Yes, this is a cyrillic text, but nevermind, talking about graphics here (ಠ_ಠ)
So Orion is an advertising and production company.

This logo can be easily modernized by getting rid of an outdated move — replacing letters with massive graphic signs.

To be fair, we liked the initial idea of using CMYK color palette, so we went with it and layed colors on top of each other. That creates an optical illusion — in small version of the logo colors look like green-red-violet.

Now it is so much easier to place that sign everywhere:

Overall:

Logo got simplified and modernized, which is a good thing!
In contrast, that sign might be a bit uncommon for such company.

4. RNDR: enhancing readability

Are you able to read that logo? Are you sure though?

PNDP? PNDR? RNDR? Okay, we had to help these guys.

First of all, let’s fix the font itself:

Still might be confusing. Let’s try something like this:

Adding gradient to make sure that you are supposed to read these “R”s

Overall:

It is readable now!

5. Friend Zone: making the sign clear

Friend Zone is a small city cafe with a geeky theme going on (that’s where that triforce came from).

First of all, we picked another font — it was too soft and round and had a “beef” with sharp triangular triforce shape. Lines had to be reworked too.

Plus, it is a good idea to get rid of that coffie-ish color palette to stand out from all these coffeeshops. Let’s check it out on some merch products:

Could be used like this in social networks:

Overall:

Sign got cleared up, became a little more unique and graphically correct.
Still a hipster style logo though… Also it might be not friendly enough for a Friend Zone cafe.

Final word

Obviously, that was not deep redesign, we focused on showing a direction for everyone and providing one of a few possible solutions!

We are Logomachine design studio. If you need any kind of design help or advice — feel free to contact us!

Need help with your logo design? Post it with a short description on your page on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using hashtag #logomachine_help and we will reach out to you :)