A few thoughts, one its a forced concept, second it doesn't read bio unless you tell someone it does. I would also question the name "bio" it may already taken and copywrited. I also feel in general if the mark can't be read in black and white its not strong enough. Stick with a simple type treatment that can easily be read and do your marketing with either a tag line or accompaning copy.

I read the logo as "bio" too. How about making the "b" and "10" different colors to start with?

Thanks Dan. I'll try something as soon as possible. Concerning the copyright, I should have mentioned that it has to clearly read b10 (b one zero) which is the name of the company and which we know we can use freely.

Thanks Jan. I am currently testing the use of 2 different fonts to make it clearer (without good success, but that might come later)

Sorry to veer off topic a little, but I'm trying to attach a gif with an example treatment of the b10 logo design discussed.

I'm probably missing something obvious but how do I go about attaching the files? There doesn't seem to be any option available when using 'post new comment'

Many thanks

Bird,
When you pronounce the name of the company do you call it "bee ten" or "bee one zero", or should it be bilingual? Should it include "solutions inc" in the title, in which case it would be a mistake to leave that out when considering the logo design. The suggestion Jan made of separating by using colour would result in the b being treated as a separate element in the pronunciation, you could also use a zero with a diagonal crossbar to make it clear that it is a numeral, and by extension the character next to it is also (because it has the same height and colour). The b needs some attention try making the ascender lead into the counter like Pump, not necessarily with the open counter, just the junction of the two elements at the base and keeping the echo of the 1 in the curve at the top. A point about printing orange, like purple it is difficult to get it to print satisfactorily using 4 colour process.

ChrisG,
At the moment, since the redesign, it is not possible to upload images unless you are the creator of a thread, when you can add them to the initial post. You might also want to read this thread.

Tim

Tim,

thanks for the clarification

tim, in english we pronounce it it "bee-one-zero solutions" and informally "bee-one-o solutions". In french "bé-un-zéro solutions". In written form it is important to leave it as "b10 solutions" because this way it is the same in both french and english (our market contains both french and english speakers).

I agree I made a mistake by leaving out "solutions" from the logo

I will try out what you propose concerning the b tomorrow

About orange... I didn't know about this, why is that? (my guess is you see yellow with dark magenta dots instead of pure orange, am I right?)

Again, thanks all for your comments, they are greatly appreciated.

Bird,
My question related to how you space the characters, to see if it was possible to infer the pronounciation from their appearance. A customer, seeing your company name might presume bee-ten, it might be worth your while practising with the spacing to see if you can produce the correct pronounciation.
The problems with reproducing orange are due to the limited colours that yellow and magenta can produce, generally they reproduce as a brown. Your printer should be able to tell you what he would prefer, but I would go for something like 100% yellow and 50-60% magenta. The effects will also be influenced by the type of stock you are printing on.
Tim

I ended up beiing way too busy to work on this during the weekend, and I will be out of town until wednesday. Work will resume then.

I have attached to my initial post the design idea from Chris G. Also, I slightly modified it and attached the result. I find the modified one more consistent, but I still don't know which I prefer it.

The modified design uses 100% yellow / 50% magenta according to photoshop's CMYK model. On my home monitor, it produces a satisfactory color. How much will that change on real paper with real ink, I don't know.

I have tried to play with the spacing, and I agree with what Chris G said to me by email: "I think this does not necessarily make the matter any clearer".

Chris G asked if it would be possible to use "B 1 ZERO" to communicate the pronunciation of the name ("zero" is "zéro" in french, but "one" is "un"). Technically, yes, but I dislike the inconsistency it would bring (why have "1" written as "1" and "0" as "ZERO"?).

Don't be so cleaver. The 10 b looks terrible (the balance is wrong), just use a well crafted lower case b. People will still get it.

That junction of stem and bowl on the b makes a dark spot in your new design. The same x-height removes the b-one-zero reading and returns it to bio. The binary look you were trying to employ overwhelms the logo in your new designs.
The strapline is not positioned well under the logotype, it appears to overhang to the right (because of the curve of the 0); it is also a bit light for use in all applications, a business card for example, the tracking/kerning is too loose, especially apparent in the INC, you should be aiming for even optical spaces when kerning, a method for checking kerning is to print it out and view it upsidedown with half closed eyes, the light areas should appear similar in size.
As a final point it is more useful to create your logos in a vector drawing program (like Adobe Illustrator or Freehand) because that will allow you to enlarge the logo without worrying about resolution and the file size will be smaller, it will also be easier to create 4 colour, spot colour and rgb versions. If you continue with Photoshop, for most print uses you will need to have the logo at least at 300dpi at the size you intend to use it.
Tim

thanks timd, I will take the time to correctly read and understand your post as soon as possible (stem, bowl, x-height, strapline, etc. are all terms I am not familiar with). I just want to point out that the logo is composed directly in Scalable Vector Graphics format (SVG) using a text editor (like notepad). I was using photoshop only to look at colors and to quickly copy/paste "SOLUTIONS INC" from Chris G's design to my modified design.

To simplify (possibly oversimplify)
stem – the vertical section of a letter
bowl – the circular part of the b
x-height – the height of a lowercase x, used as an average height of lowercase letters like a,c,e,m,n etc
strapline – more correctly this is a subordinate line that appears with a logo for example Smith's Sausages (the logo) followed by Taste like pork should (the strapline), in this case the Solutions inc
I don't know SVG but if it is a vector program that can be imported into your artwork that will do the job.
Tim

Have you thought about using a zero with the diagonal slash to emphasize the b10 over the 'bio'?