[Project Complete] Vacation Home Consultants - $150+ - Due ~ May 10th

[homehandler]

(Admin code added by Palmer - SH702341M)

I'm posting this new project for HomeHandler, a new business that will be assisting vacation home owners with setting up, running, and improving their vacation homes.

http://www.jdfunlimited.com/demos/hhfiles/HH_Layout.jpg

This is NOT yet another vacation home search/listings site, but rather a "friend in the business" firm that will offer consulting, tools, education, and everything else for the owners side of a vacation home business.

THE PRIZE: $150 cash money :)
The Date: May 10th, 2005 (Tuesday) - somewhat flexible
The Site: see this url for our current web page mockups & some bad logo examples
http://www.jdfunlimited.com/demos/hhfiles/
Format: High Res PSD or vector, would prefer final in vector

Colors: Feminine friendly colors, preferrably high contrast that will look good in B&W, on a fax, a T-Shirt, a billboard, and definitely our web site. We have some latitude here but our audience is at least 60% - 40 yr old housewives.

Style: We want a logo that will appear trustworthy, professional, and simple. A hand & home incorporated somehow would be nice, "vacationy" images may fit too. Nothing that looks like a law firm (stuck up), too cartoonish, or seasame street (see competitors). Would like to see a square or rectangle version, rectangle style mainly for the web site.

Text & Layout: "HomeHandler" is the company name, room for a slogan would be nice too. Slogan could be "The vacation home experts" or "Take control of your vacation home" or space for a slogan. Home & Handler can be separated if needed inside the logo.

Competitors: Who knows why people put these things here, but here we go anyway. These are "other" vacation home type sites that are in our space - we don't want to look like these. When compared to these our logo should stand out - AS BETTER/CLEANER/STRONGER/FASTER THAN.

The seasame street looking competitor (http://www.rentalavenue.com/)

Good core product, way too high tech on logo & bad site layout (http://www.rentalbot.com/)

Nice site, odd logo (http://www.rentoneonline.com/)

Good you're still reading. What's the "+" about in the title? We will have many sub projects and other ventures that I would like to work with you on if you win this one. If you think the layout we have sucks and want to try something else I'm game too.

I guarantee you quick and detailed feedback from your work. We won't change our minds, the company name, etc while you're working either (I've seen that here before - yick). I'm a designer myself but just can't seem to wrap my hands and be satisfied with my own work on this project if you can understand.

Here are some things I toyed with, but in no way should they be considered a guide - especially for color. In fact, I hate them - so here is what not to do :eek: No lasso's either, thats what got us here in the first place.

http://www.jdfunlimited.com/demos/hhfiles/hhconcepts.jpg

[shnickerdoodle studios]

One from me....

Thanks,
Deanna

[homehandler]

One from me....

Thanks,
Deanna

Wowsa, this is exactly why we posted here - something different, fresh - a new look on our idea.

Personally I like it, though we'd love to see more ideas along this line too. Maybe a different font for the slogan. I have to talk to the other LLC members as well. Here's what it looks like in our layout, I'm not married to the layout and the colors would definitely need to be mapped over from the new logo.

http://www.jdfunlimited.com/demos/hhfiles/HH_Splash3.jpg

[shnickerdoodle studios]

Another one from me...

Thanks,
Deanna

[homehandler]

Hi Deanna, this one is less accurate of our brand I guess is the nice way to put it. Looks like someone is deserted on an island, something we're trying to say won't happen with us - we solve that pain. Worse yet the house looks like a porta-potty/outhouse in this one and maybe a bit cartoonish.

The house theme was good in the first, any other ways you can think of to show it - maybe not even a full house, maybe using half of one like a bookend or something... who knows.

[Fabian]

Hi :)

[homehandler]

Thanks for the submission. I like the idea of making the logo more high tech, though it's hard for me to guess what it is just by seeing it alone. I'd love to see more along these lines, as well as some with HomeHandler in non-cursive font.

[eziey]

:)

[homehandler]

Ok, now I like this direction. The hand looks a bit like a lobster claw, any way to straighten it out some or modify it? The logo is very readible and I like that though the slogan is a bit tight. Nice work.

[Tyler]

:D

[eziey]

:)

[Bojan]

Hi

here would be one from me... Your feedback is appreciated

Best regards,

Bojan

[Mark]

:)

[homehandler]

Hi everyone, I wanted to give you all some feedback here to help improve all the logos.

eziey: Still a little too "claw" like I guess. Good in concept, hard to implement in 2D maybe. Needs to look like a hand.

tyler: I like the idea, but fitting the letters in the home is kind of difficult. Maybe it's a little too busy is the problem - not quite sure. I guess we're trying to be the Google/Dell/Microsoft of our space and don't need as much iconography.

bojan: Interesting. The colors are different than anyone has used so far. Pretty bold and it would definitely stand out. The puppetry concept is interesting - though I'm not sure if really thats the message we want to convey. I haven't run this by my partner yet so I'll know more soon.

Mark: Good things come to those who wait I guess. I'm really liking this one, though the starburst/rays are a little to long/jagged. If they could be shortened up or fewer that might look better. The detail inside the homes is nice though I'd love to see one that is just a silohette (remove windows, add tiny white lines between them).

That's my feedback for now. I'm also starting to doubt our baby blue/gold colors on the site. If people have any recommendations that could be useful :) It appears the logos are all coming in with different colors than these so thats telling me something.

Exellent work so far by all. I'm sure we can have this wrapped but by our deadline and someone paid :)

[Bojan]

thanks for appreciation.... i guessed that being "square" with colors would make it pretty ahead your competitors, at least logo-wise... puppetry is breaking out of the box, i agree. if you would like some revisions please tell, i'll be more than glad to do them.

best regards

bojan

[Mark]

Here's my revision.
I like your website's colors. It's very warm and welcoming. I would'nt change a thing. :)

[homehandler]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for putting that together. My "focus" group has been fairly unfocused and likes most all of these. Yours has stuck out so far and personally I like the latest modification. The doors may now be a little too tall, if they were smaller/shorter it might give the houses the appearance of being bigger/two story units.

Here are a couple iterations I tried with your first attempt.

http://www.jdfunlimited.com/demos/hhfiles/logo_iterations.jpg

It would probably also look good with the homes above the second H and with homehandler across the bottom. I still would love to see peoples ideas so keep them comin' - 2 days left :)

[Paula23]

:)

[Unorthodox]

:)

[Fabian]

:)

[Fabian]

also

[homehandler]

First I wanted to say thank you for all the hard work and creative ideas. I just got off a long phone call with the business partner in this venture and we appreciate the work you have all put in. Unfortunately there can only be one winner in these things, but we will likely seek you out for other projects as we were impressed with this.

I'd like to do two things here at this point.

1. I'd like to extend the deadline 3 days to May 13th to give those designers with concepts we like time to improve and finalize them.

2. I'm happy to annouce Mark (#13/#16) and Eziey (#11/#8) have submitted concepts we would like to see more of. Paula23 is also on track with the roof above the logo - we like this and would like to see it a bit more polished / cleaner.

Special thanks to Bojan, Unorthodox, and others for their stellar work.

Current improvements we would like to see.

In the concept you submitted Mark we like the idea but wanted to see some variations of it that might fit better. Different color schemes and fonts for HomeHandler that would be more custom/recognizable as our own vs. standard text. Nothing off the wall, just a font people could associate with us. Different placements for the homes, different types of homes maybe? Something was odd but we're having trouble grasping it.

In Eziey's concept, can you work on the hand idea some more? I know its hard to draw a realistic 2D hand, but we really did like idea this if it didn't have that lobster claw like look to it. It did well in our test audience, though some thought it to be a shadow fo the house even! Other color options would be nice to see too.

Lastly, Paula - your concept with the roof over the text was a new idea and we liked it. I guess if you can modify the font for HomeHandler and change our slogan to "The Vacation Home Experts" we'd love to see it.

A winner will be decided before the end of this week we promise :) Please PM or email me at design (at) homehandler.com me for more information if needed.

[Paula23]

Hi,
Thanks for the feedback.
Here are some modifications and color combinations.
If you'd like to see any other adjustments I'll be
happy to make them for you :)

Thanks,Paula

[eziey]

:)

[Mark]

:)

[homehandler]

:)

Well, the partner has help decide. We would like to congratulate Eziey for his design in message #24 - the winner.

We would like to thank everyone once again, and ask for a few minor tweaks to this one that Eziey can hopefully take care of.

Specifically the hand is still a bit off of what we'd want. We'd like to see a few more angles if possible, less curve in the wrist, flatter in the plam and maybe the thumb more closed?

--- The three comments on the current logo prototype. ----

1) Use bold colors. We like the purple and dark gold,
dark blue and gold as an example. In fact, gold for
all "handler" options would be great. I think the
hand looks like a wave when blue, so let's keep the
hand gold.

2) Soften the angles on the hand.

3) Show multiple sans serif typefaces. Try "Franklin
Gothic" in one of them. Please list the typeface used
in each logo option.

------------

To save time once we have seen these options we'd like the final version in:

a. A vector version of this image with exact colors listed
b. At least a 300 dpi PSD version of this image 4" wide
c. Names of all fonts in the logo and, if they are not common, font files as well so I can install those fonts on my machine.
d. Any other source files you can think we may need

Thanks!

[eziey]

Thanks for choosing my design.:)
Actually, it is not necessary to have the font in your PC as all fonts in the logo will be converted to object for the final.
One more thing, font files will not be provided with the final. I can just let you know the name and you can purchase it from certain website.

[homehandler]

Thanks for choosing my design.:)
Actually, it is not necessary to have the font in your PC as all fonts in the logo will be converted to object for the final.
One more thing, font files will not be provided with the final. I can just let you know the name and you can purchase it from certain website.

Thanks for the education there about fonts, I'll check into buying if necessary but I think our font choice is going to be pretty standard.

Here is the last changes, please let us know how to get the final version. You can email to design@homehandler.com if you'd like.

1) We like Franklin Gothic font from Example 11

2) We'd like the Handler/Home to be the same color as they appear to be close now but not exact. We like the Crimson color in 13 for the home/home image.

3) Tagline should be "The Vacation Home Experts" spanned under HomeHandler.

4) Lastly can you use Franklin Gothic "Medium" vs. Book?

That's it!

[eziey]

:)

[homehandler]

:)

Looks like concept 18 is it. Can you use that to make our final file? Thanks for your hard work. In case we do want to modify the font or colors at all will it be an AI file or rasterized PSD? We prefer something we can edit a bit just in case.

-J

[eziey]

Link to download your file has been sent to your private message. You're provided AI (Font Converted and Font not converted), PSD and JPG.
Thanks:)

[homehandler]

Link to download your file has been sent to your private message. You're provided AI (Font Converted and Font not converted), PSD and JPG.
Thanks:)

Files received, looking good.

Moderator/Admins: Please close this thread and pay eziey!