My Business Logo - Critiques/Suggestions Please

[DoFoT9]

i really like the original red logo. simple yet effective

 

[g3m1nn1]

suggestion: less is more, especially in logo design.
not feeling the thunder sign ( just my opinion )

 

[thunderweb]

It's just hackneyed to use the jagged lightning glyph idea. It only works if it's authentic, like say Rayovac's antique logo (see http://images.google.com/images?q=rayovac ). I'd give up on that. I'd also lose the lame trying-to-be-mod-minimalist-techy-feel font, it's very 2001. Web 2.x is about being elegant, revised, original, legible, people-friendly, print-mimicry, and blurring the line between painstakingly-well-crafted and effortlessly simple. This reads a first year design student's very first rough draft for a company he's making up in his head. I'm sorry that I don't have more specific, useful advice for you other than to get out a pencil and a sketchbook and start thinking up new permutations of identity, names, and logo concepts until you have 100, and then pick the best 5 to translate into vector. Then you'll only have a rough draft and still have work to do, but you'll have built character and lasting icon value.

I'm not exactly trying to come up with something that is absolutely stellar. Btw I am 15 so I am still learning graphic design and I'm not exactly the best but I do spend a lot of time trying to improve and get better. Any suggestions on any graphic design courses (books, online courses etc...) is really appreciated. I'd love to get some ideas on some things I can take to improve. I'm not like a noob to all of it and I do know quite a bit, I've already produced 6 fairly large websites already and it's something I really enjoy. I appreciate your suggestions. Thanks.

Second one you posted looks best.

Thanks, the blue is my favorite of them all. I am working on another version of it right now and I'll post it when I'm done.

Thanks everyone for the critiques and ideas.

 

[wongulous]

Well, if you're 15 and have a standard art education and haven't taken much in the way of college-level, critique-based coursework, I would say that you are right on track. You have a wonderfully bright outlook, outward energy, and naive openness that designers twice and thrice your age can envy.

Keep it up. The best advice I can say is to find someone in the industry to borrow their books and swatches and past portfolio work and to be a guest to an AIGA meeting and see the types of stuff they make or processes in designing for a client. And as I said before, invest in pencils and sketchbooks and really master the process. You obviously can use the tools, so that isn't the struggle... it's the process of design. It's not just staging of fonts and swirling around a color picker on your Mac.