Ted, i like a lot the one in the right, allthough i think you have some characters too decorative, like your "g", also I think your "c" and "e" are too closed, you should open them a little bit, and the "n"s are too wide, narrow them.

Be careful with the union betwen the circle and the vertical stem in your a, d and g, you should compensate the black thing that happends in the intersection

Ah, and you should make all the letters narrower, in order to compensate them in an optical way and don

The middle option is by far the cleverest and also reads best.The horizontal use in the third option doesn't work so well, since the d and e stand out but the fish doesn't read as an o.

I second Stephen's suggestion that you try this approach with an existing type (modified for weight as necessary), but if you do decide to stick with your own letter design than Cristian is right in saying that your c and e need to be opened.

Your n is too wide.

For a good example of the kind of optical adjustment Cristian recommends for the a, d and g, see Futura.

I like the idea of. Very nice. No.3 (bottom) is the strongest. Unless you can separate No.2 from the text, because I like the verticality of the mark. I agree with typeface simplification as well. the 's' seems a little too clever as does the 'yi' lig. And the apostrophe needs some tlc too. also, with No.3, I feel that it needs some space in between the mark and the text. I believe this would strengthen them and also relieve the redundancy of the letters.

All said. The concept in an of itself is very strong.

thanks for the feedback!
i modified the horizontal version to help the 'o' out a bit and pulled the vertical version off the type to try and get a sense of which would work better. What do you think?

Im thinking that I might save the type I designed for further refinment as a learning experience. I am surprised at how much I enjoyed designing the letterforms but obviously I've got alot to learn.
More on that later.

I still like the vertical much more than the horizontal. It works in so many different ways: you have you initial letters of the conference name; you have fish; you have bubbles rising to the surface; you have a diver's mask and snorkel.

All we need now is some tartar sauce and a nice white.

hhp

I suggest keeping the very clever monogram from either
option 2 or 3 and setting the rest of the type in something
more readable and tame. You're making 'dce' look great,
don't overdo it. Avenir, Gotham or any of those geometric
sans would go well with it.