I have no problem with the grey mark and the font is interesting, but for me the “e” and even the “i” could be kerned a bit tighter.

Although the dot on an “i” is often that high in a text face, it feels a bit awkward in a logo. I’d maybe drop it 1/3 of the distance to the top of the “i” stroke.

Visually, the space between the u and the n is less than the others, I think. Either increase it or tighten the others.

Cheers,

T

Once you drop the dot on the i (a good idea) the gray mark needs repositioning (and perhaps even some scaling) — even now it’s positioned a bit too high in relation to the lettering. I also think that the two =’s need some work on the left side. The four oblique ends there cause a lot of unrest. On the right side this effect wouldn’t harm.

Hope I have been clear enough ; )

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

I think that there might be a difference in weight between the characters? Or so it seems, optically. ’U’ and ’N’ are quite heavy, then comes ’t’, which seems a little lighter, and then ’i’ and ’e’, which are even more light to my eyes. I don’t know if this is what you wanted. If not, a little tweaking here and there wouldn’t hurt. :)
I think it makes it a bit restless, so to speak, and a little more uniformity might make the whole mark more harmonious.

Thanks, everyone!

I perfectly see what everyone means about the kerning and weights...
What makes this hard is that I’m using upper and lowercase forms together, which makes it difficult to kern and to make the weights match. We all know that kerning uppercase letters is quite different from kerning lowercase and there’s always some kind of adjustment to make to the weights when mixing small caps with lowercase... so I think that’s where most of this trouble comes from. So, with that in mind, does anyone else still have anything to say about those two problems? This really was hard for me (lots of tweaking was involved, I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and an inexperienced one, too), so more input will be appreciated. :)

Meanwhile, regarding the dot on the lc I... I don’t think I can drop it. It really is what makes the lc I form most recognizable, and this is a tough word for some portuguese people to read; I don’t think I’ll make it even harder on them. But I’ll try it again later, thank you for the tip. :)
Now about the height of the dot... actually, it comes from the mark. If you look closely, you’ll see that everything is aligned: the bottom of the last horizontal line on the mark is aligned with the baseline of the lettering; the bottom of the second horizontal line is in line with the x-height; and the dot on the I is perfectly in line with the first horizontal line. That was how I got to the size of the mark and how it related to the lettering. I’m still looking at the mark for some improvement, but I thought the left side (those oblique ends Bert mentioned) gave it some charm and made it a bit more dynamic. Adding obliques on the right side instead (I did try it, before) made it too busy, because it clashed much more with the large oblique line... but even so, Bert, do you think the mark should be bigger or smaller? I didn’t understand what you meant.

Thanks!
ruD

As the top bar of the sign lines up with the dot on the i, things don’t match anymore when you lower that dot. That’s what I meant ; )

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

Well, just to show you what I believe will be the final version.

I’m really stubborn, so I didn’t want to give up on that T having the upper part that much shorter – and more to the left – than the bottom curve, but I guess I just had to change that to give balance to the whole word. I believe it’s much better, don’t you?

Oh, and I dropped the dot on the I to align with the white space between the = on the top of the mark. It’s a bit too close, but I guess it is a bit better than having it that far away as I did. There were also other minor adjustments.

Thank you! :)

I see you also slightly increased the weight on some of the letters. I think it looks much more balanced now, because of that. :)

Yes, I did. :)

You were right, the lowercase letters did seem a bit more fragile than the uppercase ones... when I showed the first version I’d already tried to correct that, but I just couldn’t hit the “sweet spot”; they always looked a bit too fat or a bit too thin... so I tried a different approach.
I can pretty much always see what’s wrong – I think I’d thought about all the things everyone said about my first version, before –, but then I still have a really hard time making the correct adjustments...

And I still have a problem with the U, for example; that white space makes the top of the word seem too empty at the beginning... makes me want to push it closer to the N, but that makes everything else look just wrong. :P

Tweak tweak tweak... :P
ruD