Apex Customer Solutions #2

Way too many effects. Get rid of all of them. The bevel and emboss, the strokes, the inner shadow, etc.

Did you make these in Photoshop? If yes, this is your first mistake. Logos should be made in Illustrator, which a vector based software. Vector gives you the possibility to reduce or increase the size of your logo without any loss of quality, which is super practical for logos. Photoshop is pixel based, which is fine for photo editing, web design or digital painting. But certainly not not for logo design.

I'm not going to harp on you for the gradients too much, that point has been made.

But here's a few reasons why they're to be avoided. Gradients are difficult to reproduce in different contexts. A logo with a lot of gradients might look fine on a website but printed very small on a business card they get splotchy and look bad. If you were to make a sign to hang on your building, vectors (points and lines) are required to cut materials, and all those gradients would likely be removed anyway.

But most importantly, gradients alter your perception of the overall form, the shape itself. Effects like these distract your attention from balance and proportion, and make it hard to be objective about what you're looking at.

In certain applications I think it's ok to have a few effects in your rendering, but you have to start with the solid shapes and nail that down BEFORE you trick it out with fancy special effects.

That said, let's look past the effects and examine your overall shape. It's not terribly interesting but it's not bad. The lines ought to be adjusted slightly, however. The angled lines on the left sides of each peak are parallel. That's good, it helps balance things. But the lines on the right are nearly parallel, and they really look like they should be. Take the center point of the trough between the peaks and nudge it over to the right until it lines up better.

The bold black outline around the mountain is too thick compared to your letter style. Unless your going to use a bolder block style font, you ought to ease up on the stroke.

The font isn't too bad but it's a bit dull. It's also too crowded in the space. I see in this version and the previous that the "AP" and "EX" are rendered in two different tones, is that to indicate that the APEX is an amalgam of two words? If so, this way of expressing that is too subtle and should be accentuated.

So try this out again, strictly in black and white. If you aren't happy with it in solid shapes, the problem is the the shapes themselves and no amount of special effects will fix them. Keep at it, this logo has potential.