Help my startup pick a new logo

Hey guys

As an employee at Top Hat Monocle, I hope I can answer some of the questions that have been brought up:

We started out as an iphone gaming company, but did a 180 shift very early on and are now in the process of relaunching the company as an education software company.

One of the goals with the logo redesign was to retain the quirkiness of the name (it's been scoring very well among our current users), but we want to shift the focus more towards the icon, for a couple of reasons:

- we want to be able to use the logo on stationary, tshirts, the product, application icons

- we're targeting the academic market

- it gives us a lot more flexibility with how we name our products in the future

Thanks for all the feedback! It's all incredibly helpful

It depends on what the rest of the site design is as well - it's hard to judge the logo in isolation. It's the same concept as pairing wines with cheese.

For example, A is the most neutral and could go well with a modern layout, G is minimal while still having an old school flourish and can match up with a similar design if the designer had the chops to pull it off, and the rest are bit crowded and overdone, which means they probably wouldn't sit well in a cluttered interface but could look good if they were showcased on a simple site.

Ah, the lazyweb at it's best.

Have you thought about a rename? That's a hell of a mouthful for a company that's not the result of some kind of international M&A event.

It would help to know what your business name is, and what your business does. Otherwise there is nothing to base a decision on, other than "it's pretty."

Being honest, I'm not particularly enamoured by any of those in the main link or singularly any in the second.

I'd probably go for the hat in this: http://99designs.com/designs/3702194-original Combined with the monocle and text placement in this: http://99designs.com/designs/3682895-original

Although not with those particular fonts. Something deco and 20's would be nice. Cicle or even Futura would work at the right weights.

Man, only if http://www.modernballots.com (from this thread earlier today -> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1115385) supported images (or better yet, some kind of web markup, i.e. textile) as "candidates" this would make for a great use of the site, seeing as I don't love or hate any of the logos and would find giving each a star rating much more appropriate.

bradbeattie, i hope you're reading this thread :)

Design isn't merely taste. That you can't immediately rule out half of them says you don't really know what you want the logo to convey. Some of these logos say "playfully campy," some "serious" and some "5 year old with clipart." We can help pick which achieves any particular goal, but you better start by being sure about the goal.

My criteria for this is always can I print it on a t-shirt in one color (i.e. black ink on white t-shirt in this case). If it works on t-shirts it works on business cards, stickers, etc. Keeps it simple and keeps promo items cost down in the early days.

So in short B (that's how I voted).

The grayscale one will give you fits when/if you need to use cheap printing in black and white.

Similarly, the ones with a lot of fiddly detail will be harder to render well on paper.

I would suggest the ones that don't look like sperms :)

Given no other information I think I prefer (c).

Also: http://99designs.com/contests/36804

i dont know what it is, so i don't know. is it a pharmacy or a search engine?