Company Logo Ideas

[Pashley26]

I think a name like RI Specialist Engineering or RI Specialist Fabrication ticks every box personally.

The word specialist is key to not sounding cheap IMO. The word applied always sounds good too.

Edited June 17, 2012 by Pashley26

[RobinJI]

I've been a bit quite with the business ideas thanks to being busy building this beast:

It's been a bit of a mission thanks to 600+ welds and 200+ holes, including 50ish sleeved with crush tubes, plus it's all made to a high tolerance from thin wall box which is all too easy to distort when welding it! the main bulk of it's done now though! Not typically the sort of thing I'll be planning to do, but it was a good project to get my eye in again since not doing any real practical work while I was at uni, plus it'll be going around a lot of shows as a display stand for a new low production racing car, so should get a lot of exposure with my name written on it.

Anyway back on the topic of names, Jardo, I think I've got to agree with you, 'Specialist Fabrication' seems to tick all the boxes while keeping it unspecific enough not to cut out market segments in the early stages. (Part of it is that I really don't want to cut out the marine market with words like 'motorsport', being in a near coastal location, and having strong links with a composite firm, plus an interest in boats my self, it's an obvious area to look into.) I also like Isitafox's suggestion of using a longer tagline to keep things clear. The only downside to using 'specialist fabrication' is that it can't be shortened to remove the word 'fabrication', which makes it less useful for attaching to a line of products, it would end up having to be a company name, which would act as an umbrella under which other 'brands' were created, rather than being able to be part of it. Although that's not necessarily a bad thing anyway I guess. I'm also increasingly liking the idea of just calling it RJI Engineering, then just specifying the type of engineering in a tag line, as it leaves options open for the future.

As for the company's logo, I did play with Sunnyboy's idea, and had pretty much settled on this:

Or this:

Until it hit me that the fade wouldn't be able to be done on a vinyl cutter, as you have to use block colours because it's being cut out not printed, so unfortunately, I don't think it's really useable at the moment. I did have a go at creating the face with blocks of decreasing sizes, which came out as this:

Which isn't too bad, but I just don't like it quite as much, I know sloping the blocks to match the text would help, but I don't think it'd help enough. Plus applying it as a vinyl would be fiddly and a bit awkward, so I think I'm going to try and think of a different direction to go in.

Edited July 2, 2012 by RobinJI

[MadManMike]

Second one is best, but find a better typeface. It screams Windows standard font, which in turn screams amateur.

I do like the idea though!

[RobinJI]

Right, well it's been a while (again) but I think I've got my final design now, so a few opinions would be good, just in-case I've made a cock up. It's changed a lot since this thread started up, as I've decided against a '3 letter name' as there seems to be a unanimous opinion that they're much harder to remember than proper names. The name I've settled on's 'Ingram Racing' Simple, but I think that makes it easy to remember, and using 'racing' rather than motorsport means that it doesn't rule out other markets like push bikes or boats, as well as allowing me to branch out to electronics, bodywork and other bits that wouldn't fit in with 'fabrication'. Any feedback's good, I know 'racing' could be seen as sounding a bit boy-racer, but I really can't think of anything else that works as well in every other way, and I'm hoping keeping an upmarket and mature image otherwise will help counteract it.

This is the design I'm favoring:

The boarder can be left off when it's small, and it'll usually be accompanied by a tag-line explaining what I actually do. I think the coloring will work with most common car colors, and I think the style of it will work with modern and classic cars alike, so I'm generally pretty pleased with it. My only concern is that it seems a little familiar, and I'm worried that it came from a subconscious memory, rather than being original! I guess if it is original then that's a good sign?

I'm planning any vehicles where I have a choice of colour (i.e. my next 'company car') to be British racing green, and I think the coloring works quite well with a dark green:

And one without the boarder, just so you guys can see what it looks like for smaller stuff:

So yeah, any feedback's more than welcome.

Thanks, Robin.

Edited September 1, 2012 by RobinJI

[JD™]

I'd say drop the border on the larger stuff too, but other than that it's cool.