Ashley Caudill Logo Draft

Here is the logo that I created for the Educational Leadership department.  I will be the first to say that logos are hard and I am not very good at designing them, but this one doesn't seem as awful as my other attempts, which I am too embarrassed to display on the internet.  I was hoping to create a logo that made use of the white space and had images or words displayed in it, but unfortunately I am not that creative or talented, like the graphic designers we saw in class.  I was hoping to capture the feeling of leadership, which I tried to do with have the person in the middle displaying bigger and in a tie, because to me usually people in ties are the "higher up" people on the totem pole.  I also wanted to display the text "educational leadership" because I feel that my logo isn't quite strong enough to the viewer to understand what the logo is for.  One the right hand side, I originally tried to do a cool "swoosh" image, and after many failed attempts and uneven edges, I decided to erase it because it just wasn't working, but a happy mistake happened.  I accidentally only erased a straight line creating a "cut" in the image, which I thought looks visually interesting, so I started erasing more and more pieces, which is why the yellow image on the left have the white lines through it.  I choose yellow because obviously JMU is purple and gold, and I thought would add a nice color pop to the logo.

Overall thoughts? Opinions? Any feedback would be great, as logos are not my strong suit.

Jen's Draft Logo

My husband is the CTO for a environmental non-profit here in Charlottesville called Environmental Health News.  The organization writes and publishes environmental health news and also conglomerates this type of news on their website (http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org).  When the organization was formed, they hired a graphic designer to create a logo for them.  This was the original logo.

While the organization didn't love the logo, they felt that it was "good enough" and captured the essence of at least some of what they do.  About a year ago, they were redesigning their website and they hired a second graphic designer to update their logo.  This is was she created:

My husband hates this logo because the designer modified a stock graphic and it is super generic.  It doesn't speak to what the organization really does.  So, when we were given this assignment, I figured I would give redesigning their logo a shot.  If they didn't like it, no worries, they already had a logo.  So, I started by creating a list of the things I think of when I think of each of the words in their organization name: environment, health, and news.  From that lists, I liked the idea of incorporating a hearth rhythm, the earth, and some kind of broadcast signal.  Keeping that it mind, I started doodling.  I doodled a lot.  As I drew, I began to play around with ways these elements could work together.

At some point in my drawing, I realized that I could use the heart rhythm to create some of the letters in the logo.  So, I drew a draft, freehand version of the heart line and played with it to get the angles right in order for the line to create the N.  Here is my rough, rough draft.

Then, I began to play with the type.  The font above was kind of plain and didn't really grab me.  I tried lots of different fonts and combinations and this is the best so far.

Then, I just needed to play around with the color, layout and spacing.  Here are my current rough drafts.

These are the factors that I would love feedback/help with:
1)  Should the earth be offset or centered?
2)  The color of the earth, green, blue or some other color?
3)  The font
4)  Should "environmental" and "health" be left aligned (pic 1), or repeat the angle (pic 2)
5)  Should there be more white space between the line and the words
6)  Too much white space in the earth?

Thanks all!

Christy's Symbol Practice

Here is what I came up with for the symbol assignment. I wanted to start with a picture that interested and inspired me, and I have always loved trees. I pulled the photo from Google (https://www.pinterest.com/lnadal56/5th-grade-winter-trees/), then I did the illustration by hand. I am often faster at sketching out ideas with a pen/pencil and paper than constructing them in the computer. I re-familiarized myself with Sumopaint to create the image-related silhouette, and the further simplified concept-related image. I pulled the arbitrary symbol--a leaf--from Google (http://clipart.heavtryq.com/flower-clipart-viewclip-images-722-Black-Leaf-with-White-Background). The leaf was meaningful to me because deciduous trees like the one I used produce leaves like this...rather than pine needles as evergreens have.