Click the header to watch the video clip.
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We chose a URL, it’s www.heyamigo.net
It wasn’t difficult to come up with this. We knew that it was HeyAmigo as soon as we thought of it. Predictably though the .com was already taken by these guys. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
Now obviously the .com would have been better but it’s not available so we were faced with a choice. Do we settle for a URL that is clearly substandard, like amigoonline.com, or gotamigo.com (apologies to those who have any URL with ‘got’ infront of it). Or we could stick with our first choice, fly in the face of fashion and hope that no-one notices, or cares that it’s not a .com.
Selfishly, we sought to gratify our own pleasures and went with the .net.
We’ve had a mixed response. The average comment is (sucking air through teeth noise) “aaaah .net?” or “I’m not sure about the .net, couldn’t you get the .com?”.
So there we have it. This one error could be the ruination of all our plans to take over the world one web app at a time. Or….people may not give a shit. Our money is on the latter.
We knew it would happen, but we’re falling behind on our schedule.
Jason is due to have the UI design finished tomorrow but we haven’t even decided on the logo and colours yet so that isn’t going to happen.
Dave is still working on getting the alpha live which is fine and he is on track for his 9th June deadline for version 1 to go live.
We (myself and Ryan) were due to have all the copy written for the website by tomorrow but (eek!) we’re going to London for the awards ceremony of our 55DSL competition on BD4D. So that won’t happen until next week at the latest and besides Jason is not ready to start the website design until he finishes the UI design.
Our schedule was ambitious and to be honest we’re surprised we got this far without it falling apart. Hmm…time to regroup, rethink and push back some deadlines.
The new deadlines are as follows (updated on Basecamp)
UI designed = May 1st
Website copy = May 4th
Website designed = May 19th
Thanks goodness we worked in three weeks contingency for this kind of stuff.
Now that we are happy with the basic concept of the logo it’s time to work on the colours and fonts/text etc. This is what Jason said:
After exploring some more type options I realized that my problem wasn’t with the type so much as the “G” specifically. While I did try a bunch of other type choices, I didn’t think that any of them were nearly as strong or as simple. So, instead I just ended up redrawing the “G” to read better (especially at small sizes) and look nicer all around.
After that I whipped up some colour combos. I think there are some really strong color choices here. All of these are striking and don’t bring to mind petrol signs anymore. Even though these are more colorful than the original ones, they still retain that simplicity due to the basic shapes and smooth type being used.
There are certain ones that really stand out for us (the yellow, orange, and blue coloured ones). We realised that we want the emphasis to be on the word ‘Amigo’ not on the smiley face and those three do that. We ask Jason to work up the blue one with some variations on secondary colours.
We did have one other concern. That because of the capital ‘G’ people might read it as ‘Ami Go’ instead of Amigo. Jason has agreed to fine tune the ones we chose so we’ll see what he comes back with!
… well, that was the plan, however so far we’d been down the route that users would use an email address and a password to login, I hear you asking how this affects URLs. Well, if we’re identifying users by an email address then it makes sense that their “rating page” could be accessed by a nice URL that looked similar to their email address. There’s the problem:
An email address, public, on the web = spam
Okay, so it wouldn’t quite be an email address, but for someone with the know-how it wouldn’t take much to get that information. Apart from not wanting to annoy the users of Amigo with more spam, given the nature of the service, spam is the last thing we’d want to be associated with!
Pretty URLs were the plan, so pretty URLs there will be, something had to change. The simple solution here was to have something else to identify users by, i.e. a username.
Okay so we had a chat with Jason and he managed to convince us that this logo was the way forward. In his words:
This smiley gets the imagination going a bit more. I know we have been referring to it as a smiley, but when it’s not around all of the other similar logos, it begins to be more abstract. Not to the point where you would miss seeing a smiling face, but it isn’t hitting you over the head. There is something about the stark simplicity of this one that is most striking. The other thing is I think the smiley does is convey friendliness and simplicity very well. It also helps to illustrate and reinforce the name by implying there is a face (an amigo) behind this service.
We’re sold - where do we sign?
When you are not a designer making decisions on design work is ’so’ difficult. You may like a certain design, or combination of colours but does that mean that it’s good, right or even relevant for your app? You need to use other criteria to make your decision.
This is where your initial list of ‘words that are associated with your app’ really come into their own. If you know how you want your app to make people feel then your logo should be doing that from day one. If you remember the words were.
- Simple
- Professional yet friendly
- Approachable
- It’s easy, not complex
- A service for everyone
The smiley does that perfectly. Not only that but it’s intelligent, doesn’t look like anything else out there, and is inviting.
We’ve learned that it’s good to listen to your designer. You chose him or her for a reason and they are the professionals here so let them do their job. You can agree or disagree but respect their opinion - they’re usually right!
Firstly, we were drawn towards the yellow billboard logo becuase its yellow and black colours are so striking. It’s easy to read and it stands out on the page. We think the lights above the billboard need some work as some people may not realise that they are indeed lights.
The smiley faces on the other hand we felt were a little too dumbed down (colourwise mostly) and they might get lost on the page. Also the ones on the far left felt too much like maybe a petrol (gas) station sign to really give that friendly look (that’s the petrol station logo designers fault not Jason’s). And the smiley face coupled with the word Amigo makes you think it’s social software (which it’s not).
We also had an interesting discussion about being careful ‘not to look like other web apps’. I’m not sure whether this is even relevant, because after all if the logo is a good one; it catches people’s eye, makes them feel the way we want them to feel and encourages respect for our product then who cares if it looks just like the Flickr logo. Right?
Well, that should be the case but the web industry is a pretty tight place and sometimes respect comes from doing something ‘new’ and not to be seen to be ‘copying’ others. Right!
There is definitely a need to ’stand out from the crowd’ purely because there are so many new web apps emerging right now. I think this is where the smiley faces come into their own. They are definitely different. Which means that we are leaning towards them - maybe purely for their ‘differentness’ (made-up word, don’t repeat).
But is that because we are children of the industry and being different is what’s required? In truth we think that the yellow billboard (although you could argue a tad predictable) is the best logo there. Oh the decisions!
We asked Jason to work up the two logos that we liked (the tiny billboard and the smiley face). And these are the visuals he sent back. With these comments.
One of the things I really tried to latch onto from the questions I asked you was the idea of friendliness and approachability. I wanted these logos to really feel like a handshake. Very kind, and colorful.
These logos are obviously much tighter than the sketches, but don’t feel like you need to pick just one look and go with it. These aren’t set in stone. Colors and arrangements can change. What we are looking for here is the right feel for a logo. Refer back to your list and see how these compare with what you set out for what Amigo should be.
I really tried to boil these down to their most basic forms, giving the impression of ease of use and simplicity.
First up, the billboard. This is just a basic progression from the logo. I love that it conveys the idea simply. I also included just the basic type treatment apart from the billboard.
Next, the smiley. I tried moving forward with it from the sketch, first a pretty direct interpretation.
Then, I tried to make it a bit more fun and abstract the smile a bit. This turned out pretty well, because it make for a very strong logo that is less overt about the smile. As you can see on the lower left, it also reduces to a very nice iconic form suitable for small usage and branding. Very simple and memorable.
I then took it one step further by playing up the type and name a bit more. Still powerful and iconic, the smile is even further abstracted.
Click the header to watch the video clip.
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Jason sent through some initial sketches for the logo. They’re great. We’re still thinking about which ones we think we like. Up to now we like the tiny ‘roadside’ billboard-esqe logo in the far top left and the smiley face in the bottom right. Next step is to ask Jason to work up these two logos.