Son of the Makeover Maven #5

© 2000 by Gary Priester. All Rights Reserved.

Cooking Up a Tasty Logo Makeover!

Dear Gary,

The logo for our fledgling catering company really needs a make over. We have no money to pay graphic designers - so I did it myself, and to say I am design challenged is an understatement. Please help. We are a staff of three, offering high end food to private and corporate clients. We're trying to get our menu out "there" but would feel more confident with a more polished image.

Thanks!!!
Andrea Prussky

Well Andrea, maybe we can work out a trade. I do your logo, you feed me with some of that high end food. Will work for food as they say!

I created these makeovers using Xara X, the soon to be released successor to CorelXara. The Corel part of the name has been dropped as Xara has taken the sales and marketing responsibilities back from Corel Corporation. Xara X is currently in the final beta stages and is expected to ship in September. For more information go to the XaraXone.

I've decided not to say anything nasty about the former Corel Magazine this month. I mean, why kick a dog when he's down? And considering how many times this so-called quarterly publication has come out in the last two years, not to mention the equally so-called archive CD, I'd have to guess this dog is not only down, but out for the count to boot. RIP.

Out of the Frying Pan…

Here is the current logo for Chef Solutions. And I have to confess the reason I picked this logo for a makeover is because I was feeling a bit lazy, what with the summer heat and all, and this logo is so nice and elegant there really wasn't much to makeover. The logo consists of a black and white rectangle with the text set in Bernhard Fashion BT.

And Into the Fire.

For openers, I tried four variations of the current logo. From left to right, top to bottom, the first variation contrasts Gills Sans Ultra Bold against Adobe's Poppl-Residenz Light. I often like to use two very different fonts, such as these two to create a typographical Yin and Yang. The next logo uses a font called Rennie Macintosh, which was designed by the Scottish architect associated with the Arts & Crafts movement in the early part of the last century. Xara X now supports multi-colored fountain fills which I used to create the bright gold effect. The ornaments are from the Rennie Macintosh Ornaments fonts. Both fonts are available from www.eyewire.com. Bottom left uses Goudy Handtooled and Poppl-Residenz Light. The last of the four uses Empire, the tall thin font and Adobe's Ex Pronto, a handsome, hand-lettered, script font.

It was hard to beat Andrea's logo so I decided to move off in a slightly different direction. I added a checkered border across the top. Chefs wear checkered pants in case you're wondering why I used the checks. The chunky font is Adobe's MotterCorpus MM. I used Xara X's new interactive Contour Tool to add two contour shapes, the middle one I filled white to create an outline effect. The small text is Gills Sans Condensed.

Moving away from the rectangular shape I tried an oval which has a softer, more pleasant feel. I set the text on a path and used one of the Rennie Macintosh Ornaments in the center. The script font is Snell Bold also known as Snell Roundhand Bold. The thin cap letters are Onyx.

I tried this next approach just to get it out of my system. It feels more like a logo for a Pizza parlor. The chunky font is called Bernard MT Condensed. I always get it confused with Bernhard, the designer of the font used in the original logo.

I love brass plaques. There used to be a restaurant in the Canary in San Francisco that had a plaque, similar to this image, mounted on the bricks next to the front door. I used Xara X's unique Elliptical fill, to achieve the curved fill, which gives the plaque a 3D rounded appearance. This logo is very elegant and uses the Bernhard Fashion font from the original logo and Adobe's Poppl-Residenz Light for Catering and Services.

Returning, more or less, to the rectangular look, I thought a stylized serving tray might be an interesting shape to frame the text. And it definitely communicates catering services, don't you think? The big font is Onyx, an elegant and thin, serif font. The script is Poppl-Residenz Light.

I had to trudge upstairs and get a small sauce pan for reference for this design. Somehow the pan with the steam says food preparation. The large font is Bodoni Poster BT. In case you're wondering what BT means in all these fonts, BT stands for Bitstream, the foundry (like Adobe) that makes and sells the fonts. The small text is Friz Quadrata, one of my favorite fonts.

The sauce pan in the last design was OK but it lacked motion. I added some wheels (to imply mobile catering services) and skewed the pan, wheels and steam slightly forward to give the logo some feeling of motion and action. After all there is a lot of activity associated with food preparation. The zippy font used for the big text is MoterFEM D. The small text is Adobe's Nueva MM, a wonderfully light and playful font.

Are You Ready to Order?

So where do I net out on all of this?

I guess of my designs, I like the last logo best because it is memorable, active, and fun. I like the brass plaque a lot too for a more elegant and classy approach. But then, I still like Andrea's original logo a lot too. I don't know, I'm feeling a bit indecisive today. Maybe we should have a vote. Why not contact me in the Graphics Unleashed Forums and let me know which (if any) of these logo designs is your favorite.

Need a makeover. I can't promise anything, but send me a small file with your logo, (please try to keep the files size under 40K) and if I decide to do a makeover, you'll see it here.

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