I like, I would like to see what you do with the colors though /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

hey marcus,

I like the idea of negative space but I think it comes across as a "stiff" logo for lack of a better term. I look at that and these words come to mind, "institutional, formal, ridgid, bound by rules,".

I thhink church logos should fit the church atmosphere. Loose, and flowing to a certain extent which gives the impression of a joyous, welcoming, inclusive group of people. I don't know anything about your church so I don't have anything to go on. What's your motto? if you have one. Is the church casual or more traditional? Many things come into play with a logo for me so I might tend to look at them a lot differently than others, but you asked for our opinion so I gave it to you. Hope you don't mind! /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

later, jim

Marcus, if you are going to use negative space, I suggest you use pastel colours so it is easy to see the N and the L.

David

Very neat idea. Would look good on a t-shirt!

The logo definately looks good.

Here's my question, and yes I know the "real" answer is everyone, but when creating this logo it has to be asked: Who is the target audience of the rebranding?

Young? Old? Mature Christians? New Christians?

That might help narrow down the design possibilities if the question has not been asked.

I've always liked the tree analogy for churches, here's an idea I was kicking around. I have it in illustrator if you like it. It was also a learning project for me since I'm a noob with illustrator.

Jim

Very cool wetclay, very cool !

That would look sweet on a t-shirt too.

What kind of designer do you think I am? Of course i've looked over our city demographics for our target audience, lol

Are target area is for the mid-30's but we also wanted to pull in a younger mature crowd as well. I'm not so worried about the persons being christian or not, it's a pull on the eye. I showed it to a few board members and I had gotten some questions like: Why is the church name at the bottom like that? Why is it just black? Can we use it on anything? How come it doesn't have our church "motto" in the design?

So I had to reply to the first... It's about a brain impression. Do you know it's McDonalds because you read the sign? Do you know it's Nike because you read it? Of course not, the logo's have be impressed into our minds. We know it's McDonalds or Nike because of Golden Arches and The Swoosh.

Black is because that's the way I design logos. I don't want to stitck it with colors and things and be locked down with that one design color. This can be placed on a black background and be colored white. This can be placed with a violet pastel on a darker background for womens ministry. I want it to be flexible with any context.

As soon as it's vectorized, we can use it on anything. Unlike our old logo I created.

Because our church changes it's "Motto" of quadranniel influence every four years it would be necessary to have to change the logo all the time, and everything we had printed, stitched, or molded with the logo would need to be thrown out and changed or redone.

Jim, I like your logo, but no offense, when I look at logos like that, I think "stock logo" that every other church has. We are trying to strive to stick out in our community and not look like every other church. But it may work for another church. I hope I havn't offended you.

no prob marcus. I see that you have thought this out a little more than most churches, that's good. Most churches want a logo but don't understand why they need one. I do agree that my logo is kinda generic but I created it for two reasons. One to give you another idea and two to try to get to learn more illustrator. No harm, no foul. I just like playing with logos so you didn't offend me. I would be offended if you didn't tell me what you really think.

here's a different idea:

Hey the first one and the one above are nice.

I like the original. I am partial to logos that convey a message with as little fluff as possible. Would also translate wll into one of those "Euro" oval bumper stickers you see a lot.
See the OBX logo for Outer Banks (of NC)

Concerning the first posted logo:

To me, it seems almost like it's too "futuristic." It makes me think more of "space-station" than "church." But, maybe that's just me. I think it would benefit from a different font at the bottom, or else make it not all-caps. How it is now, it seems more suited for a youth ministry logo. Hopefully these ideas are of some use to you. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

I think that the first logo is great for the target audience you're going for, you don't want something too "churchy."

thanks for the further comments guys.

Sun'd, you hit it on the dot.

I've thought about bolding "life".

very wise... very wise...

It kind of grows on ya! My first reaction was "wow! that's hard to read" but the more I think about it I like it! And it has a lot of design possibilities in different applications (ie tshirts, bulletins, web site, etc...! )

Schwabby

jake, you crack me up.

schwabby, thanks for the comments, the different applications are what I was trying to achieve. You should have seen our last logo I did back three years ago when I got into serious design. Well.. I guess you can: http://clients.marcusmonroe.net/newlifechurch/1/nl.png it's in the upper left.

Bold would deffinately be helpful at the moment, though I think once you have the logo in color just using a different color would work as well.

Thanks Sun'd, I hadn't thought about that.

WOW! I like that old one a LOT!

Why don't you tweak that one and update it a little!

Schwabby

Horrible amounts of cash spent on printing, couldn't have embroidered, or silkscreened. Plus we're trying to reintroduce our church to the community and that logo is stuck in their head, along with the bad impressions of our church.

ah! Good point! Forethought on a logo is important.
I think one of the neatest church logos I have seen is a artsy almost brush stroke of a hand very simplified palm up, with a same style dove flying out of it.....I wish they had a web site so that I could put that one in my inspiration file.
(I tried to get the web site but they said they had one coming...)

Schwabby

spiffy