I forgot to add, the grey as just the working colour not the final colour choice.

When finished the logo should work in a variety of colours depending on where it is used.

I love it. As for the kerning - I would put in an extra few pixels between the 'e-y-e'. I feels they will join together, especially at smaller sizes.

Jay

Thanks Jay, that is a good point.
I have struggled with the e-y-e and you are right, it does look better with a little more space between these letters.

I'd connect the e-y-e letters. the first pair is rather easy to do, the sencond one would need tweaking of both letters Y and E. But it would make a grand difference.
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Robert Koritnik

Love the version with the bird sitting on the lettering! Exploring various modes of conjunction may be a good idea, though; in small applications like business cards, the bird will likely suffer when it is this small, especially seeing that it has a much higher level of detail than the lettering already.

Come to think of it, this offers a great wealth of possibilities. Why not make the bird a brand character, like a mascot? Depending on media / context, he could even be animated, sit on the logo in different ways, flap his wings, maybe pick away at the counters or attack the mouse cursor from time to time … especially seeing that you do interactive and probably animated work, that may be a befitting (and fun) expansion of the 'logo' idea. (Reminds me a bit of what the TYPO Berlin conference in 2006 did with the cat – they had a black Flash cat as a mascot, who 'lived' on the website. She'd often sit still for a while, but had a number of (sometimes surprising, playful and funny) behaviours that were randomly played; a whole bunch of people came back to the website just to see 'what the cat was doing', and she became the secret star of the conference).

Beautiful!
I would also like to see the e-y-e connected....

Thanks everyone for the encouraging feedback.

I will have a go at connecting the e-y-e today and see how the logo feels, I agree that it will tie the word together.

altaira: Thank you for your ideas, the TYPO Berlin website and their use of the cat mascot is really cool. I was in Berlin at the same time as that conference but wasn't aware of it, shame! I like the idea of the bird as a brand character that we can use independently and we are in the process of redesigning our website so an animated character works well with our new ideas.

i also love this. i agree that connecting the e-y-e is your best choice.

am i the only one who thinks the 'g' seems just a bit too thin? i feel like it might improve the logo to beef it up a little

So, I have spent the last few days trying different combinations of a join between the letters e-y-e and am feeling a little stumped.

This is the best I have come up with so far. I took the approach of following the line of the first e through to connect with the center of the second e.

Any suggestions regarding this approach? Anyone think of a more natural connection between such difficult letters?

Gerald: I had a try at enlarging the g in response to your comment but felt it started to get a little out of proportion. In the end I have kept it the same size as the earlier post.

The first e seems too wide.
I would suggest not separating the e and the y. First of all the little white line will just disappear at smaller sizes and second is breaks the word shape.

I think the first "e" should go to the top of "y". It will close it and not making it visually wider than other letters, but second "e"'s bowl will have to be changed to be connected from the top of "y".
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Robert Koritnik

The terminals may be another thing to look at that may contribute to the present disjunction of "glad" and "eye". Have you tried making them rounded in the e/y as well?

I don't like the connection of the eye nor do I like the top eye. I think that the top one needs some more space between the e-y--e. I might try using small caps on the eye? Not sure if I would like that or not either. I am diggin the overall feel of it and the beginning letters. I think your first version is more successful than the second ones that are connected by far. I think the reason the eye is so different because of the tops of the y are not near as round as the rest of the characters. Try tweaking those a bit and see if that leads you anywhere.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

I like the idea of rounding the terminals on the e-y-e and also Robert's idea for joining those letters, so will try both. I have really struggled to join those last 3 letters without distorting the first e and I was not happy with the latest version I posted.

We have moved into a new office today and need to get the signage sorted so I appreciate the help in fine tuning our logo. Will post some new versions soon.

Hey.

What do you guys think of the new connection between e-y-e? I have tried to echo the g-l ligature and this connection was my pick of the many variations tried.

I've also rounded the terminals as suggested and am feeling the logo has a more coherent feel

I have been playing around with different flick on the end of the last e as well..

looking better, but i'm still not sure it's there.

have you played around with connecting the y tail to the 2nd e ? or maybe connecting the top of the y to the e? here are a couple 5 second mockups of what i mean:

I took some time to show you what connections I had in mind in my previous posts.

Hey Gerald and Robert, Thank you for taking the time to mock up different approaches to the connections.

I did have several attempts at the connection you suggested Robert but felt the e-y-e ended up a little too tightly kerned in relation to the rest of the letters. I agree that it does seem the most natural connection but I worry that at smaller sizes the last three letters will run together. I think the e-y works better than the y-e as it makes the top right side of the y rather heavy.. I will have another crack at it this afternoon and see how I feel about it.

Gerald, I don't mind the connection of the tail of the y to the e, I haven't tried that so will give it a go. The second suggestion I did try and was not happy with the way the last e sat on the end of the word and also the top right side of the y ends up rather heavy.

Yes I'm aware of the "y" getting heavier. Therefore you will have to adjust its stroke weights to make them visually equivalent to others.

y-e combination would probably benefit from moving e a bit further to the right but not too much to make it look distracting. Just a bit to make the connection visible and better.

Play a bit.
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Robert Koritnik