Also I am not sure whether I should make another version with wider spacing for small sizes. Or, whether I should make the left side (the light side) bigger on small sizes so that it optically matches the right side, again in small sizes. What do you think it’s best?

George Triantafyllakos - backpacker.gr

Chiaroscuro properly refers to the innovation in painting whereby forms were represented as being primarily defined by light. Historically, artistically and aesthetically the term is inextricably wed to the Italian Renaissance. I would think that your serif font selection would be an opportunity to make that connection.

I don’t think it is really Italian Renaissance. Early painters who experimented with chiaroscuro were mostly Mannerists and Caravaggio — who has widely considered as the one who mastered chiaroscuro into perfection — was an early Baroque painter.

While historically not quite perfect, the second logo (Bodoni and Nobel) in my opinion is a great example of how I would understand chiaroscuro in typographic terms — better than the first, because of the interesting two-way contrast: the weight increases while stroke modulation and design complexity decreases. That is more sophisticated that the first approach which really just says “little” vs “much” of everything.

A.

Though it’s not exactly a Master’s degree in art history, Wikipedia does have a thorough and accurate entry on the word:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiaroscuro
To elaborate on my point, since the word itself actually has a technical and historical specificity to it—the Italian Renaissance—it seems that a font that more closely shares the same stylistic heritage as the word may be a better selection than a Bodoni. Just a suggestion. Personally I love that sort of thematic integration.
Also, there is a danger with having too great of a contrast in weight here in that it begins to look like two separate words.

i guess the upper Logo is more intesrteing to watch, but that’s just my first impression.
Letters on the lft should be bigger (worth a try). Still i like it and hope you’ll keep workin’ on it.

Following The Don Killuminati’s comments I submit another, more historically correct, version (Jannon T Moderne Pro Italic - Auto Black). I have to admit though that visually I still prefer the Bodoni-Nobel version. Anyway, my questions on spacing and optical corrections on small sizes, still stand ...

George Triantafyllakos - backpacker.gr

Following Adam’s thought, you might hit the Mannerist nail on the head with some Poetica.