I’ve held off commenting on this thread because I do this for a living, and I can be pretty annoyingly critical. That being said, I have some feedback 🙂
Logo
- I’m worried about a three-dimensional logo, because I just learned in a meeting about rebranding one of my clients at CMU that 3D logos don’t transfer well to any kind of fabric. So there might be future trouble should we decide to use it on tshirts or something similar. If we don’t have fabric plans and we’re only going to use it on print and electronic materials, it’s not an issue. But I see tshirts in our future, so this gives me pause.
- I’m also concerned with the prominent “SCLUG” as Josh pointed out. It kind of looks like you’d want to pronounce it Sclug, and without the “Steel City LEGO Users Group” with it, an audience unfamiliar with us would be confused. This makes me lean more toward the horizontal banner-style ones where the graphic is a smaller component.
- I felt like the graphic was also very Gothamy and didn’t scream “Pittsburgh” like I hoped it would. Our skyline is great, but as someone else pointed out here, we’re more widely known for three rivers and bridges. Also, can’t we get a brick in there somehow? Are we prohibited from showing them at all?
- Finally, a good logo should be unique, memorable, distinctive and timeless. While what they’ve presented is unique and possibly memorable, I think it’s sort of trendy (with the 3D) and I don’t know if it represents what we’re about.
I think this is a good start, but I’d love to see them do something with a richer gold, play with the idea of rivers or bridges and get away from the Gotham city thing. And maybe incorporate a generic building brick that resembles a LEGO brick. (It’s possible the image was supposed to look like a brick, with buildings being the studs. Ben pointed that out, but it flew over my head and I’m pretty hip to this jive.) I do, however, realize that I am just one person so hey — if you all are cool with this, I’m not going to get my undies in a bunch. Plus I realize this is free. Free is good.
Website
I can’t access the forums page, but I think the web is a step in the right direction, too. I think maybe we can explore a color scheme that matches whatever logo we settle on, which would make the appearance more striking. (Also, it’ll make us look like we have our stuff together, which is an added bonus. I love hobbyist groups that look professional and I think we should aspire to that.) I wonder about the ordering of the top nav — like, should “About” be bumped up before “Forum,” since one attracts newbies and people looking for info, and the other is reserved for people with accounts? Since we read from left to right, we want to make sure the audience sees what they need as quickly as possible. It does still feel a little WordPressy, though, and I’d like to see it have a more unique Steel City LUG identity. I think that can happen once we decide on a logo. At CMU, we’re working with an outside design firm (Wall to Wall — they did Burgatory’s brand!) and when they do logo+web, they do it in that order, because the former will inevitably influence the latter. So that’s something to consider too.
I think I just noticed that the background is LEGO plates, which is a nice touch!
Sooooo….that was a lot longer than maybe it should have been, but I do feel like this is really the one thing where I can contribute. I’m a writer/web content manager by trade and I’m more than willing to help out in this effort any way I can. Even if it’s by being too commenty.