http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-6/169091/harsh.jpg

It's kind of rough, mainly because I didn't feel like spending 20+ hours hand "cleaning it up" (it was a bad rough scan of a drawing).

They paid some kid (well, i'm younger then him) $40 to do them a website, like 2 months ago, and he hasn't even produced anything yet. When I heard that I decided i'll give it a go, and thats what I have finished so far, the logo. I had limited resources for that (not enough *good* pictures), but I think I made it work.

What do you think? I think they will be pretty pleased with it, and I can easally get better pictures and replace them. I might stick with the whole orange-deal look throughout the site, also.

Also, does anyone know of any nicely designed band websites for me to look at for a reference?

It's a bit difficult to read. The constrasting spaces in the background obscure the distinctions between letters. It took me a good ten seconds to see the M in Manner, for example. Try brightening up the background.

<< does anyone know of any nicely designed band websites for me to look at for a reference? >>

Simple but effective: White Stripes (http://www.whitestripes.com/).

Very hard to read. It would be easier for people to review if you would put up a simple black and white outline.

Here's a tip about logo designing. You have to design it so that it can be printed in black and white, so that it can be easily picked out from far away, so that it can be read and understood in an instant. It has to be extremely flexible because it may appear in many different mediums from clothing to TV to tiny stickers. I can see that that band logo will be hard to pick out on a poster from across the street because of its complexity.

However, if you combine that word logo with a graphic logo then it might be acceptable.

For example, this logo for the Aphex Twin. It does not say "Aphex Twin" but through brand usage people know it is the Aphex Twin. http://www.dragon.org/chris/gifs/aphex.jpg It's a mature logo built up over several years. I don't remember how it was introduced at first but probably it was that logo combined with a wordlogo so that people would identify the two together.

I prefer the simple, clean approach too. deftones (http://www.deftones.com/4_1/index2.html).

Really the only you could maybe get away with going crazy with PS effects on a logo is if you know absolutely 100% that it will never appear anywhere but on a computer screen. And don't take this the wrong way, but multiple PS effects/filters just used for the sake of it screams "amateur night" to me.

matt

Eh, thanks for the suggestions. The guitarist hand drew that logo, and I don't think they would change it.

It's not hard to read, compared to some other metal logos i've seen. I'd show you them but I don't know the names of the bands because I could never read the logos. :D