Paul I'm not a big fan of the 3D effect. With Adobe Illustrator CS You are going to see alot of cheesy 3D so you might not want to go there. I love the flames though. I'm not in love with the campy cowboy HX Brand type, its 2004 not 1864. Loose it, just my suggestions

Hi Paul

...well this is the best thing to communicate with designers all around the world. I could never meet i greek who designs a logo for a ranch.

Anyway my view is that you need to make less lines and more tight composition. I would propose to keep dark the width of the letters (as in your last proposal) and if possible to avoid the inner light of the fire so the flames can just be black and describe the shape of the letters. If you sure need to keep the inner parts of the fire you could maybe use them dark and the outer shape with a fat and calligraphic outline.

I realy had a hard time to explain in english what i mean and hope you understood. If not is reasonable why.

christos

thanks for your comments thust far. let me take a bit of time to respond

I'm not a big fan of the 3D effect. With Adobe Illustrator CS You are going to see alot of cheesy 3D
darnation! this was my concept before i hoped on illustrator and even knew you could do this 3D thing... maybe i should use my "3-D" sketches but i wanted this to be really clean. is 3D really that cheesy? any other opinions? the main thing is that i wanted to give the HX mark some weight when set on an angle, i don't want them feeling flimsy. what would be a good alternative to give weight to the mark? i guess i'm not married to this design, it's just the strongest concept i've come up with so far, but i can do some more brainstorming...

I'm not in love with the campy cowboy HX Brand type, its 2004 not 1864
i was actually shooting for comtemporary but maybe this is too 70s? 2000? instead of 2004. Again I'm not wedded to this type, i just stuck it in there to comp the feel of having a tag there in that spot. i'm not sure if it helps or hinders there. Maybe i'll try to draw some beautiful slab letters like FB's Dispatch for the tag.

Christos:
Is this what you meant? if so it's genius! but maybe you had something even more genius in mind. let me know what you think.

Paul:

This last post is a huge improvement. There is definitely a difference between "3-D" and "cheesy 3-D", and this last post is not "cheesy". You have a much better use of your positive/negative space.

Before seeing your last post, my main comment was going to be that I usually see brands on a more vertical plane (on the side of cattle). I didn't immediately think brand when seeing your graphic. I realize that the branding iron would probably be seen this way, but there is no handle/pole coming from the brand to identify it as the iron.

Aloha!
Scott

Scott,

i was waiting for you to comment. ;^)

Maybe i should clarify a bit better. My whole concept with this logo plays off the word "brand." Yes, this HX mark is my family's brand as in branding iron, but i acutally want to take the mark from the meaning it had in 1864 to the present meaning: "a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or manufacturer"-- Websters (not necessarily a big hunk of metal) That said i want to keep some of the symbolism of the branding iron - thus the flames and the rust-colored HX in the first post. So no one really needs to "see" a brand as in a hunk of metal on a post, but i want it to be "felt." does that make any sense?

oh and thank you for the "not cheesy" comment. i feel much better now.

Paul, I agree with Scott the last attempt is much better and the 3D isn't Adobe cheesy. Nice work

hey thanks dan, i don't know why i didn't think of that myself last night, but thanks again to christos for helping me come to that conclusion. now i gotta resolve the type issue... hopefully i'll have something up for ya tomorrow. thanks again for your

...for your help i guess it was.

anyhow i did my best to come up with some suitable lettering. it's no Dispatch, but this little scratch of lettering has a lot of me in it i was actually shocked that that comes through in beziers. after i spent a ridiculous amount of time on the lettering i placed it with the art and figured it probably doesn't even need it! i guess i'd probably end up using the mark and the lettering separately. anyhow, take a look, lemme know whatcha think.

logo + lettering = ??? HX07.swf (1.8 k)

Paul

what you designed is exactely what i ment.
I just think the flames need a little more work; maybe less fire tongues and more boldness. However in your last post you keep the outlines of the letters. I think you don't need them. The letterforms are very clear as you have them in the previous post.

Paul, you know better than to post a swf file! This site likes gifs and jpgs

thanks miss tiff. you're the other person i was waiting to comment. ;^) i don't think a branding iron would literaly produce flames, but i thought fire would be easier to "code" than smoke. and i don't need a strict literal interpretation of the branding iron anyway. oh and flames are just cool. ha ha

but what do you think of the lettering? is it too much? superfluous? are the lettershapes sound? is it

Paul,

I like how your mark has developed. Your latest posting although simpler in design from the originals is much more dramatic. A terrific improvement. A couple of minor comments, the \ stroke of the X looks a little thin and something about the 3-d effect is slightly off because X doesn't seem to be lying on the same plane as the H. One last thought, personally I'd like to see the mark and the type relate more. Have you tried using the slab serif HX in the flame mark instead of the sans?

Paul, I like the inclusion of the "HX Brand" type beneath the marque where appropriate. The only snafu I see (which probably won't be a problem) is many trendy clothing companies do the same with their logos� place a logo image captioned with "foo brand".

I actually liked the Western type in #1 better than the one in the SWF; have you tried Clarendon? Also, I agree with Kirsten, there's something funny happening at the join of the H and X.