What sticks out for me is the spacing between the two part of the K letters, and maybe the two A's in Kansas could differ a little more, maybe drop the crossbar from one of them to leave an upside-down V shape?
But very nice work, and I agree with the first S, I think it should be re-considered. :)

Thank you tdabner! It's funny, I noticed that K right after I posted. I'm playing with colors now and it is killing me! So hard to avoid going completely oddball/cartoon with this. Thank you for your feedback! I'm excited to debut a finished version of this tomorrow.

Any other opinions out there?

Not a fan of the C (doesn't fit with the other lettering options, no mate) and the E and S in DESIGN are just ugly. The outline stroke of the N seems heavier than the stroke weight of the rest of the letters (inconsistent). The first and ugly third S's also seem vertically stretched.

I agree with Thomas on the K's issue.

The overall design seems fun, but it also feels rigid. Might just be the grayscale, but might consider adding some other ornamental details or shifting the letter tracking/orientation a bit.

Thanks Andrew! I'm not very worried about consistency (obviously) and I'd like the K C D & W to not have mates. I can't really verbalize why but I think each of those should have one "one-of-a-kind" forms--hopefully ties back into the acronym that way.

Hey! I like that E and S! Actually I tweaked the S some--it's much more fluid and 3 dimensional now.

Still struggling with color concepts.

I meant that the C doesn't have a mate in the words, I understand the difference from KCDW, but perhaps one the E's in WEEK or one of the A's in KANSAS could be set similarly using the dots.

Regarding spacing...you obviously want to do it optically, but I can't help but notice that KANSAS/DESIGN and CITY/WEEK both have the same number of letters which makes me want to at least see an option that works that sort of alignment into it.

As it is, while KANSAS CITY and DESIGN WEEK are centered at the line-level, it looks odd as CITY and WEEK align vertically OK but KANSAS and DESIGN look off kilter.

I'm seeing these as two distinct visual groupings:

   K A N S A S
D E S I G N

and

    C I T Y
W   E    E   K

Gotchya! I'll play with that for sure. Hopefully posting the final tomorrow.

I like the improvement on the S in design, much more fluid :) I think my favourite character in the whole mark is the T, it's beautiful. The acronym works very well too.
I look forward to seeing the colour version!

Aluminum-- Great insights! I played with the layout a lot in hopes of fixing that optical tendency you described (and I agree with), I think it's MUCH better now. In the image below, the old one is on top and the new one on the bottom.

As far as colors go, I've created a 4-color colorway. The text is always presented in white over one of the four colors, or by itself in a very dark grey. So imagine the envelope is green, the stationary has a large red header band, the biz card is in the blue, etc...

I agree with Aluminum's point and I think you have addressed the matter very well, the layout of the full word mark is much better and more appealing to the eye. :D
The colour treatments are good, have you tried the lettering in different colours? ie, the K in yellow, the C in green etc. Maybe another thing to explore when presenting it on a white background.
I love the development so far!

Hey tdabner! Yeah I tried that originally but to me it felt like a public broadcasting station or a children's museum, know what I mean? I really wanted it to work and add a little more "fun" into it, but with white it's also easy to just lay the mark on top of a photograph, which I like.

I'll post final-final usage examples soon but I think this is ready to be deployed!

You know what, I get exactly what you mean, picturing it in my mind now you're probably right. Damn children's museums.
I do love what you have done with the mark, and you're definitely right about white over the top of an image, it will stay subtle, but still have a presence.
The only thing I can think of after looking at them again, is maybe the red is a little harsh on the eye, but this may just be on screen, and my eyes are a bit hazy today for some reason.
Yes please show me the final examples when they are ready :) I hope the client likes it, seems like a pretty big one to impress, but no doubt your work will win them over.

right now i think the gap between the two lines is still too small compared to the distance between the letters and the words.

did you try to set it

KANSAS
CITY
DESIGN
WEEK

?

This would also stress the first letters which again would create a quicker link to your short form logo.

Sorry to resurrect this years later but I just wanted to say thanks and show you the final work!

You can see the finished type and the illustrations I created to accompany it here: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Kansas-City-Design-Week/1649178

Beautiful work! It presents a very compelling brand.

thank you!