Hello robotics people!
Our team is having our logo redesigned and we would love your feedback. Below I linked the survey, feel free to fill it out.
5 Likes
Might I offer two suggestions? Take em or leave em:
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I’d recommend removing the required name field as I don’t think you’re likely to do anything with it and people are probably more comfortable giving feedback anonymously.
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Consider removing the labels on the pictures and making them more generic (like option A and B). Knowing that one logo is existing and the other is a potential redesign may skew the opinion whereas what I think you’re really trying to get at is which design looks better and meets your new goals.
15 Likes
This is also my take, so you don’t have to agree with it.
Your might want your team’s logo to reflect the mentality of your team. This is most likely the first thing other teams are going to see, as it will be on your shirts, your website, and maybe even your robot. If you are a team with a more chill and laid-back approach to FRC, you might want to reflect that in your logo(The first one does this better imo). If you are the kind of team with a more in your face mindset, you might want to try to reflect this point of view in your logo as well(The second one does this better imo). There’s nothing wrong with either of these views, as both can produce extremely high level teams. (Disclaimer, not all team’s logos match their view, so please don’t hate me if my examples don’t line up in your opinion)
More laid back approach:
Kind of the opposite:
There’s also a large aspect of branding that comes in when trying to decide your logo. In some ways, I would almost consider this more important than your team’s mentality when making a logo decision. If you are a team that is going for a more minimalist approach to branding, I would also try to convey that in your logo. If your team’s branding is slightly more chaotic and bold, I would also try to show that through your logo.
Minimalist:
Bold:
Wow, I really went on a rant there, huh? TLDR:
Your logo should be as close of a representation of your entire team as you can make it, and I don’t think anyone here can really tell you what you want that to be. As much as people on this forum have really good advice, none of them are actually on your team. So, take what people here think, sit down with your team, and decide on an image that you feel will accurately convey the message that your team wants to send when people glance at it. You already have a really good baseline for what your idea is, now you just have to hammer out the details.
8 Likes
Agreed. Teams like Cheesy Poofs, HOT, and RUSH all are large, established teams (specifically poofs here) with a minimalist design, yet when someone sees their logo, it speaks volumes to whom they are and basically everyone knows their logo, same with HOT and RUSH, just not so minimalistic.
So just go with what’s best for the representation of the team.
I think the new design of the logo looks great!
Awesome job!
As a slight addition to this, I feel like our logo is somewhat in the middle. It’s a complicated logo, however, the colors are toned down not making it as “in your face” as other complex logos.
(although I might be biased)
1 Like
Something to notice among these is printability. Team shirts are a core part of FRC (iirc were mandated, and had a handful of rules for a while) and they can get expensive when you insist on a full-color logo. Or worse, the full-color printing processes come out looking terrible and flakes off after a few washes.
254, 1678, 1114, and some versions of 4414’s are all single-color on a specific shirt color. 3128 adds in a second color (sometimes a few more), and the rest rely on expensive 3+ color processes or nasty inkjet.
Something I’d like to see more teams utilize is half-tone, which does a decent job at not fully blending the shirt and print color, and is great for representing texture or shadows. No extra cost, just a few seconds in Photoshop or etc, and you can get a whole slew of darknesses. In particular, I think 4414 could benefit significantly from giving this a try on some of their merch. @jjsessa ?
The below is using just two “colors”, yellow and half-yellow
11 Likes
I’ve got me one or two or maybe about 8 of these! 
Edit: and yes, the half-tone graphic works extremely well on them and is very much worth considering.
Print-ability was huge for us when designing our logo. Our single color variant was drawn alongside the multi color wave. We used to get our shirts printed via some industrial laser or inkjet process, but was not happy with the longevity of the printing (started to crack and fade by the end of a season). Really not a huge deal for most teams that have a yearly shirt redesign but we have a “timeless” design that we hope team members can use for a few years. Because silkscreening 2-3-4 colors is typically 2-3-4x the cost we’ve tried to stick to 1 color, only going 2 for our new dark mode merch.
My 2cents to the op:
- single color variation is a must
- should be able to scale the logo down to a “bug” test by downscaling to 50x50 or so. Apple, Nike, Microsoft logos are all probably recognizable on a 10x10 grid…
- team numbers in your logo is always a good idea
6 Likes
Also You can’t mention minimal logos without linking 1538:
Gives me massive apple vibes.
8 Likes
Hey, guy who made the logos in the form here and I highly appreciate all of the detailed and honest feedback.
Something I would like to clarify is that the logo redesign had been made with the intention of deviation in many regards. Members of the team (and many general consumers from what we could tell) are discontent with the current state of company logos, with this being especially the case within the tech sector wherein the most oversimplification is seen in efforts of pure recognition over any semblance of personality. Ultimately, this desire to be less corporate is what drove the angular style associated with sketches and even some street art seen, with the added benefit of contrasting many existing FRC logos. We have a goal of changing the trend of design in FRC to a certain degree and though that may be lofty in nature, everything has to start somewhere.
Of course not everyone will agree, but I only hope for others to understand where the redesign is coming from (other than me thinking the old design was mid lol). Again, thank you all for the great feedback, and though not everyone can be pleased, we hope to make our logo the best it can be!
(Also feel free to ask any questions (or comment on my takes being dumb, yk?))
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I definitely get what you’re going for here, but I also want to caution you a little. There’s plenty of room for a full spectrum of branding decisions, but the logic that your team internally applies when designing the logo may not be what everyone thinks of when they see it. There’s a fine line to walk between “this pushes against design norms” and “this was done carelessly/sloppily”.
I think a big part of FRC branding that students (and mentors) don’t think about is that one of your most important features is how it looks to potential sponsors. At the end of the day, I as a student or mentor don’t really care what my alliance partners’ logos look like. Local corporations on the other hand want to make sure they’re putting their money somewhere that’s going to have longterm stability. When you fall too far on the “this was done hastily” side of the spectrum, you lose a little of that credibility.
I think that 2614 does a great job of finding balance between breaking the mold and staying professional. Might be worth a look!
I’ve branded/rebranded 20+ teams (and a few startups) and am more than happy to answer other questions you might have 
3 Likes
That’s a really neat resource.
OP:
For this/your team specifically: I think the quote “A logo is rarely a description of a business” (p. 7) can easily be described to your logos. Your logos appear to imbedding a snake with FRC-y stuff like metal, code, pistons, etc.
If one was to follow the standards recommended by 1538 in 2015, removing such things would at least not harm the ‘brand.’
From a branding resources perspective I highly recommend the collection collected on 1902’s website. The Big Bacon Theory of Image and Marketing really helped me when I was younger to grasp how stuff like branding was important for more than just looking good.
Included on the web page are many presentations from over the year and even links to a few other team brand guides that might be helpful.
We did a logo redesign back in 2014. Our goal was to take our logo designed back in the late 90s pictured here on our 2002 robot to a more modern version this logo is also designed to be “cut” in half incase we ever wanted just our name or just our logo for any reason. This was also done because at the time there were a few other teams in our area with a similar color green and all of us were doing our shirts with the small logo on left side chest style (ala 254) so we decided to switch to the big center logo style (ala 1678).
Rebranding is fine especially when your team is so young. As others have said simple vs complex is fine. Look at the two teams you won Las Vegas with this past year 2383 has a very simple logo while 4415 has a much more complex logo. The similarity is both are clean and translate well to multiple different media from buttons, to shirts, to flyers, to email signatures.
If you don’t want to go through all of the stuff from 1902’s site I will give you one big piece of advice from it:
Most teams at the competition don’t really care about your logo, they care about your robot performance. However potential sponsors and parents of potential students will. Remember you need sponsors to fund your team and parents to let their kids join your team so make sure the logo is appealing to those who will care about it not just the current batch of students.
Always been in favor of the simpler designs and not taking it too far. I’m a little bias from Team 1280, we used to have this abysmal horse with a muscular arm flexing a wrench over a bad gradient burning city… I have no idea what the goal was. We simplified to a mechanized horse and it feels great.
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