I'd have more contrast in the logo to pop the name out, but other than that, it's quite nice.

We have a lot of specialty fly-fishing shops here, and they are almost invariable "woodsy": more than one uses Papyrus as the font.... ;-) I like your take better, though: trendy withougt looking like a fashion victim.

Thanks, that seems to be my biggest problem right now... People not being able to read it at first glance...

I based the word mark off of Centennial and that font is very easy to read. Can you see what I lost in the transition from Centennial to my custom font/work mark?

Actually for the the Type makers out there, what can I do to make this easier to read in general...

Thanks,
Mike

Can you see what I lost in the transition from Centennial to my custom font/work mark?

It's those extra loops without sufficient contrast. Centennial is a nice, clean font, but those loops make it very muddy.

I like your choice of colour palettes though: if you play around with them and have the name in one colour and the extra loops in another, I think it would work well.

I didn't have a thorough read of your communication plan, but I did spot a number of missing hyphens, commas, and some awkward rivers of white space because of the justification. You probably already know you need to fix those up too, right? ;-)

Areas I would look at in the wordmark are the bottom loop of f and y, the f needs one to improve its recognisability and the y's is too cramped; does it really need the ligature between fly and tie? I would read it as flytie rather than two words; the e should have a small amount of overshoot on the top of the x height to avoid it appearing smaller than the other characters which have a flat serif, the tail seems to taper rather quickly. The feature where the ‘vertical’ translates into a curve works well on the l and t, I wonder if the inside of the f should do that, it currently creates a little notch.

Tim

Mike,

Found your logo from the posting on the Chum. I like the logo but it was hard to read. I played with it a little using the crude tools in MS Paint. Offsetting the colors helped me see the name better and and all logo's have to have a hook ;-)

The Reel Pure gig is only natural. . .

John

Thanks for the comments everyone, keep them coming :)

Also - I played with putting the hook in... Although it wasn't working for me, as the hook would have to be HUGE for it to make sense - as it's a very "zoomed in" on the knotting/tying.

But I'll keep looking into it.

Also, whats the chum... The main page I'm guessing? :)

Its too busy. Think about the customer who will be using the store. Fly fishing isn't fussy, its straight forward. You have over designed this project. Think of the history of Fly Fishing (research) and you will be back on the right track for this shop.

I can see what you mean by the design being to busy, I agree with that - and I think that leads into the legibility (or the lack of) of the logo design.

However, I disagree with the strait forwardness of fly fishing. After doing my research, (which included many different sources, including a trip to a fly fishing shop in the Chicago area) my understanding that fly fishing was anything but basic/strait forward. It's an art that takes years and years to perfect, which might even be impossible with all the little things that can always be improved on. I think thats why makes most people go to fly fishing, and why they enjoy it (the challenge, and the detailing of everything).

Most people I talked to compared it to chess, and regular fishing being checkers - which I think sums it up perfectly.

Anyone agree/disagree?

The Chum is "Moldy Chum", a very awesome one line one picture blog. That is how I found out about your logo. http://www.moldychum.com/

As a slogan, I thought "tie your own" had a few redeeming features.... ;-)

I like the version at:
http://moldychum.typepad.com/moldy_chum/images/previewscreensnapz002_1.jpg

IMHO the logo is kind of confusing. I don't really know whats going on there, i do see Fly tie -something, but the upper part of the logo is confusing my eyes, what bothers me the most is that swoosh at the right part of the Y connecting to the T just doesn't seem to work that well. Maybe you might want to play around with it some more?

As for the logo as an insignia is nice, and strong, but than your going to find away to make people understand it, without having a typo expert explain it. Ask someone like a neighbor or a guy/girl from the street ask what they read. because people here are all visual lovers and most of us have a sense for type.

Good luck!

I agree with jlejeune in that I think you need to put a bit more contrast between the type and the rest of the knot to make it more readable. Perhaps just screening it way back and opening up the gap a tad...

It reads "ayue" to me. I would put more space between the areas where the letters meet. For example, where the top of the f and the l meet. I'd also make the t's crossbar not touch the i just as the f does not touch the l. That will help.

The round descender of the y also doesn't seem to match the round bottoms of the f, l, t, and i. I would make them all the same. I wonder what a thicker crossbar on the f and t would look like?

Very nice design though!