The concept it good. With some refinement (curves, weight, etc.) this shape could work quite nicely. As a logo, I would lose the drop shadow and use a stronger color against the white

Thanks for the comments, Scott. The first use of the logo would be as background design for a preprint cover -- hence the pale colours. (It will have to be even paler to prevent it from interfering too much with the black title that will be overprinted on the cover...) For other uses it makes sense to have it bolder. There are no colours with mathematical significance, as far as I know.

Would it be better to frame the symbol when it is printed as say red or dark blue on white, to get a rectangular logo, or should it be used without a frame?

Not being designers, we would appreciate any suggestions on refinements of the weight, curves, etc.

Thanks!
Chris

C.J., in your latest comment, second paragraph, you ask about the following two options

(a) Dark rectangular shape containing white logo
(b) Dark logo

Often, (b) is to be preferred, as it will be the more memorable shape of the two.

On refinements ... well, drop the drop-shadow. No aestethic or functional reasons for keeping it. And regarding weight, curves ... yes, there are room for improvement ... but right now I can hardly find time to print, scan, draw and post. I will certainly check this thread and comment further.

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Soren O

I guess it depends on your target audience. As a non-math person, I'd have no idea what a sigma was or see it in the mark above. It's just an 'S' to me. And I wouldn't be sure what that had to do with 'decision sciences' other than perhaps *S*cience.

Like Soren, I don't have much time to give you a proper diagram illustrating corrections to make, but here's a quick sketch done in photoshop.



The squares mark the primary areas needing curve smoothing/refinement. The middle arrow indicates the area where I see the greatest need for consistency in weight/thickness relationship. The bottom arrow and lines indicate a curve relationship that I think can be improved by pushing the right side out a little.

I also agree with Soren about using the graphic mark without framing it.

As far as the background image goes

It also looks like a lowercase d and capital S

There is one straight line in the symbol. It joins the curves two places. The upper join is approx 90 degrees. The lower join is more 'sharp'.

To me, they should be more alike = I would make the lower joint less 'sharp'.

(Gee, it's tough to describe these matters in a foreign language ... but I guess I get a lot of practise here)

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Soren O

Current concept looks like arts and craft era.
I honestly don't like it at all. I do see the S and D but only because I read the post text first. It is too much of a jump for the imagination to see the D-S as quickly as a good design/logo should be interpreted. Besides I don't see how this shape expresses anything about the orginization.
I will post a different concept by sunday night.

Contrary to Ole's critique, I remain confident in the direction of your concept. Considering the information you have provided

Ole's critique ... well, I had the same thoughts when I first saw the symbol.

But I think the problem could be a minor one.

Will there be a name close to the symbol? How often? What name? What typography?
These things will determine whether or not you see the 'd' and the 's'.

How about posting a design showing this?

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Soren O

All your comments are much appreciated!

The symbol will (almost always) be accompanied by the words ``Decision Sciences'' or ``Department of Decision Sciences''. In most cases the University logo
will be on the same page. (In the department we do most of our typesetting (study material etc.) in Monotype Plantin.)

Apart from the above, we can still decide on the typography. Again, any suggestions will be welcome.

Chris

Well it is now monday, and I was just finishing the design/post I had expected to upload last night. Logo has s/d combined greek style. With this glyph it is also possible to extract some interesting patterns form the counters of the glyph (for ornamentation use, background patterns, borders, architecture, etc...)

Ole:

Post smaller files.

This is a nice shape, but I no longer get a sense for the greek delta sigma. It is much less obvious than before.

Again, who's the target audience for this?

I very much like the fact that your shape can be adapted for backgrounds, etc., Ole.

The target audience would mainly be students already registered for courses in the Department of Decision Sciences, prospective students, and to some extent also colleagues from other universities. (The logo will be used on study material, brochures explaining what we teach, preprint covers and possibly business cards.)

Thanks!
Chris

An attempt to incorporate some of your suggestions:





Any comments?
Thank you!
Chris

CJ:

The bottom two designs don't make any sense to me, but I like the improvements made in the top two designs. I like that you have created a heavier version, but it might be a little too heavy. If the heavier version is bold and the lighter version is regular, then you are looking for a medium. If you look at your bold version, it looks like it is going to fall over (to the right). To eliminate this unbalance, I have cut off the little returning curve from the end of the "S" and I have cut off a significant portion of the arm at the beginning of the "S".

This is rough, because your original JPEGs are very rough/pixelated, but hopefully it will give you an idea of what I mean. Also, the bottom probably needs to be a little thicker and the top arc might need to be rounded out a little more. I'm not positive about the arc, though, because it might only read as an "S"', whereas, right now, it looks unatural, like two shapes are melded together