Logo critique time!

The second design reminds me of the old British Airways logo personally.


Sorry, best graphic of it I could find.

It does, and it looks very good. I immediately caught onto the hull, I didn't notice the body of the ship as the word 'Experts' until you pointed it out. The BA logo was just the first thing that came to me since I'm an aerosexual and all that.

Clip art-ish. Circa 1991. CorelDRAW! Is that Helvetica? It's tired. Looks like the company owner's sister-in-law who owns one of those companies that puts logos on golf balls and water bottles designed it.

Sorry.

I understand what you're getting at in the second set of concepts, with the ship's bow and everything, and I kinda like that. I think you should try to make it more bow-ish, a stronger reference to the silhouette - since you're required to make that reference. If I had the choice I probably wouldn't.

I think the type of company you're doing this for would, by default, be tough. Not going for name recognition, and you can't use cliches like globes or anything.

Any way to get the ship's bow and the bow wave in there? With some sexy dolphins? Actually scratch the dolphins.

Still thinking as I write this; what if you had a view of the bow, somewhat stylized, with the waves, but with some perspective, from slightly above and off to the side, 25 degrees or so? You might need to hand draw some sketches to get it sorted out before you continue in AI or whatever you're working in.

Damn... I guess someone already thought of that. You could do it more from overheard, but it wouldn't quite have the same effect. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

I prefer this one, although the imagery is generic. It's more illustrative of what the company does, I imagine. The other concept, with the "tick mark" or "angled swoosh" under the name doesn't resemble a ship's bow clearly enough, IMO. It might be a winner, though, if it's redone into a clearer ship's silhouette.

Yes, I think you can do something with that. I would probably do it with brush strokes in Illustrator, more stylized, and blue, but I can't guarantee that would work that well after I saw it. And I still think you need a bow wave... even motion lines representing waves.

The first one would fit with carribean style vacation/honeymoon travelling, I would think. It's very whimsical, and if that's the kind of feeling you're trying to accomplish, then I think you should continue to investigate the first concept the most. Visually, it's the most pleasing to me. The second idea, if further tweaked, could be a decent take on a kind of "Royal" aesthetic, as the shape of the ship resembles a crown. If you could change the windows to jewel shapes, drop the pencil-thin lines, and throw in a nautical detail or two that would give direct reference to "ship, cruise, resort", you'd have a nice concept there as well. Back to the first concept: The height of the steam vents should be more exaggerated. You're going to need more variation in line width however, and you'd want to really continue on with the movement aesthetic. Either that, or completely ditch the lines and create the shapes out of positive / negative space. Take a look at the line width variation of this image. It's an illustration of a GTO that I'm working on at the moment (it's in progress still, I realize the window borders and rims are not complete). I'd think this style of drawing would benefit your logo: As all designers tend to be, I'm going to be brutally honest and say that the type needs to go back to the sketchbook. I have no intention of insulting your work, but the logotype really strikes me as something that was a 1st attempt on the computer, skimping out on the conceptualization process entirely. I'm very guilty of doing this, myself.

It might be good in the conceptual stage to not only play off of the cruise ship in the logo but perhaps play off of experts as well. This would make for a more unique take on the logo and not just your typical cruise ship image. I would also pay attention to line weights. Thin lines are typically bad practice in logos because during resize they do some funny things, especially when used small where they may disappear. Instead of merely defining space using line, you may want to use the positive and negative space of the area to help define the shape.