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Comment by euccastro | Hacker News Reader

Two examples of logos designed by successful companies with names made by joining two words:

http://microsoft.com http://facebook.com

Note how much effort has been put in differentiating the style of the two words. If you find good counterexamples, let me know.

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Its a good point - and I've been thinking that my over symbolizing of the words may be the wrong approach. It's definitely important that the name of the company can be thought of as a single unit.

I'd even suggest changing the name to Streamfocus (lowercase f).

Another thing you won't be seeing much in good logos is graphic tricks embedded in the text. Zero is best, one is acceptable if it's well done, but best avoided if you're unsure. More than that and you're probably looking silly.

The only graphic addition in your logo that I don't fully dislike is the dot in the O, but it doesn't fit well there since the inner edge of the O is not round, but elliptical. If you want the dot you should change the O, and I don't think it's worth it.

My advice is: just pick a font you like, render the name in a program that does kerning and antialiasing right, and move on to other stuff. A logo won't turn corporate customers away by looking boring; looking cheap is the most serious danger.

[Edit: And I agree with vlad it's too big.]

I agree. You'd be better off just using a single typeface. Works for Apple.

We are finished now - one typeface but bold on stream with a subtle graphic. Back to coding :)

Thanks again - we've redesigned - but in the font we have, the small f looked terrible in the skewed forward position - so capital for now (I know thats a bad reason - but we have to get back to coding)

Your customers are boring people. You would be better served with a boring logo.

I didn't realize that saving 50% of your time while working so you can do things like start a start-up company in your spare time is boring. If that's boring, I'd love to see exciting :)

I don't know your business too well, but I would be really surprised if that was the motivation for your customers. Most business people are trying to improve productivity in their main business to improve their main business, not make time for a second business. Plus, why would somebody looking to start a startup spend money on expensive software--wouldn't they save their money to invest in the startup?

If the cost of our tool is reasonable and allows deploying faster with a better product, it would make good sense for a startup to use it. We use it of course.

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