East Coast Logo

Salut Raymond!

For a self taught designer, this is pretty good! The choice of font is great and the general composition denotes a good eye for design.

That being said, there are several problems with this logo:

- It reads East Oast. No one will see the C in the symbol and connect it to "oast". The C is graphically and spatially disconnected from the word it supposed to be part of. As a rule of thumb, avoid substituting a character for a symbol. It most of the time screws with the legibility of the word and requires a whole lot of expert calculations (or luck) to work out properly. A font is a whole system of proportions and sizes and disrupting these will more than likely end in disaster.

- The symbol itself: at first sight, I thought it was some kind of weird bird. The map thing isn't really relevant here. You being from New Brunswick or Nova Scotia (I know my geography ;) isn't related to you being a graphic designer, nor does it say anything of your designer skills, your style, etc... Which leads me to the my last point.

- I command you for not going for the initials/acronym route, which seems to be taken by 95% of designers out here. But you still went for the kind of corporate logo, with the ubiquitous symbol + word mark + subtext equation. Problem is, you're not a corporation, you are a human being, with feelings, a vision, etc. None of which I see in your present logo. That's why I always recommend designers to think more in terms of a "graphic signature" rather than a logo, in the classic sense of the word. Something more organic, preferably hand made, a simple mark, without too much elements in them. Playing around with your first or last name or your nickname (having a beautifully designed "Ray" monogram would be awesome!) In this post, I show what I came up with for my own signature, back in my freelance days: http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/critique/personal-brand-mark-4

I hope this helps! You definitely have the makings of a good designer. Don't hesitate to come back for more feedback.

Keep it up!

Thanks a lot for your comments. My idea was a word play on the "C" and make both words seem to have the same number of letters. I guess its easy to read when your the one doing it lol. I also wanted to have the "C" with map and the word logo underneath make a separate logo in itself. maybe I put to much thought into it. I was trying to be clever. I've just started in logo design in the past month. Thanks again