I am a part-time design student in Melbourne and a partner in a small but flourishing consulting business covering both hardware and internet services (including design of course).

We are currently going through the rebranding process ourselves, principally because our existing logo and website are both totally inappropriate.

Businesses do change and we started out on a “suck it and see” basis and now really need to put forward a professional image more in keeping with what we do.

As a design student the process is both fascinating and illuminating, so thanks and I look forward to seeing your logo develop.

Jools

People around me have been claiming that I’ve been “Mitchitizing” them for so long I can no longer remember when it started. I believe it was the late eighties.

/me runs out and buys mitchitized.com

Even if you think of something as huge and corporate as Tesco (the supermarket), they still have their own individual brands: the Finest range, the Organic range, the Value range… they’re totally separate in their own right, and the packaging design for them doesn’t really get much more unified than a small Tesco logo in the corner.

The same totally applies with us: expect to see a ‘Carsonified’ logo in the footers of our sites and not much more. Some sites are due for a redesign soon but I assure you that they will be redesigns within their own right; not redesigns to tie into the ‘umbrella’ brand.

This company re-branding thing is even lamer than the videos about organizing your to-dos from a few months back (go to the bank, pick up laundry and call wife).

I LOVE IT. Please do not change one thing…

Ouebslave

It will fit. DropSend, Amigo, etc are all products that retain their own distinct brand. When I think of DropSend, I don’t think of Carson Systems. I think of DropSend.

Products like DropSend and Amigo aren’t adversely effected by an umbrella brand, cause they are their own brand. At least thats how I see it.

Anyway, if you are planning to add the Carsonified logo to Vitamin, DropSend, etc. then all the logos that have been presented so far are totally inappropriate. How could you possibly put any of the suggested ones onto DropSend.com or Vitamin without redoing all the branding on those sites? If you have a complicated logo, then the logo has to be big. Is the Carsonified logo going to be bigger than the DropSend logo? How is a Serifed and/or baroque company logo going to fit into sites with modernist aesthetics?

Also, I’m genuinely curious how the Carsonified brand is going to DropSend, as that is a service that I’ve actually found very useful. Actually, I have some suggestions about how to improve revenue for DropSend; if you’d like to hear them, shoot me an email.

There is nothing wrong with this but please don’t decieve yourself.

For those of us who are less creative than Ryan, but who need a creative perspective: if you go out to sitepoint.com and click on their “contests” tab, you can start a contest among graphic designers. For a hundred bucks or so, you can get a lot of creative people to send you logo designs. Some you’ll like, some you won’t like, but it might help accelerate the creative process.

/a

@John – Web apps are still core to our business. We make more revenue from the events, but that doesn’t mean they’re the most important element of the business. It all works in harmony and each part is important to the whole.

Keep up the good work.

You said to me once that you were in the events business because it enabled you to fund your software development business, but that software development (specifically web apps) was where you wanted to be. You wanted that to be your core business. Is this no longer the case i.e. are Vitamin and the FO* events considered a core part of what you’re about as well?

Its also funny how all the negative comments your receiving are also anonymous. Gotta love the web. Free to air and then hide in corners.

Keep goin!!

However, I think the (seemingly) never-ending posts about the logo re-design on this are wearing a little thin. Aside from the volume of posts (what are we on now, post 10? with no particular end in sight), it feels way too much like ‘design by committee’ to me; ‘how do you like this one’ or ‘what if I tweaked the kerning on this one’. All this blow-by-blow account is too much information (imho).

Good luck with it, anyway.