Here is the first.
With this I went with the original ideas of using reds, oranges and yellows to create a fiery theme. I used an outline on the phoenix body and wings to make it look a little bit like a cartoon. I gave the feather an outer glow and satin effect again to try and make it glow a little bit like embers.
I think this turned out alright, but considering how the logo might be used I have concerns over how well the feather might be visible especially in print.
Later on I messed around with the colours being used and made some changes to the feather. I thought it might look good in this version, so I came back and tried it out. Here's what this first version looked like with the change.
I think this looks a bit better. The use of the dark colours in the feather remove the issue with the visibility. First I just superimposed the crimson feather onto the previous satin one to give it a little bit of glow. Later I removed the satin feather altogether.
Here is the next version.
With this one I decided to test changing the oranges and yellows out for a white. I exchanged the feather for the company name and added an emboss effect to everything. The font I used was Colonna MT, which was already installed on the system. For this version I felt that perhaps it was a little more 'clean' than the previous. But here is a little bit of an issue with the visibility of the 'F'. Changing it to white didn't really seem to help anything, so I decided to keep it black. I did try to overcome this by moving the text away from the bird, but this made the two elements look awkward in how they stood apart.
I felt that this perhaps worked better as a logo, but I would still have concerns over visibility.
Here is the next version.
This was perhaps my favourite version. The dark colours deleted problems with visibility. It was here that I first made the dark version of the feather, and then decided to try mixing it with earlier versions to test the look. Witht the bird, I decided to use an inner shadow to augment the colour theme and make it 'sink' into the background.
I left the satin feather underneath the dark feather here to give it a glow and hence a lighter outline. I felt that this was necessary to make sure that its outline didn't effectively fuse with the phoenix.
Here is the next version.
This version came about mostly again from messing around with the dark feather and earlier versions of the logo. Here when I added the crimson feather to the white-red emboss phoenix, I had the idea that it might look better if the bird was superimposed on the feather rather than vice-versa. I added a blur effect to the feather to make it look a little like a watermark.
With this verison, as a piece of art I perhaps like it the best. I think the feather in the back looks really good and has a very nice effect. This would be something I think would look fantastic as, for example, the watermark on corporate letters. However, as a logo I think this doesn't work although not necessarily because it doesn't look good. I think issues with visibility and print are the worst with this one. I don't think the individual elements would be seperate enough for passersby to quickly pick out the concept in the image.
Following this line of thought and as an attempt to remedy this, I made the following version.
With this I got rid of the bird altogether to try and compact and simplify the image and make it, as mentioned, easier for the casual observer to digest. I rotated the feather slightly to accommodate half of the company name.
I think this works best as a logo, although I don't like how the ripple effect reminds me of Java.
Here is another version following the alternate Egyptian idea I had.
This was the first version I created. This idea was a little fiddly to try and create a sun-like fieriness without reveriting to the red-yellow colours. I decided to add a slightly blurred sphere in the background to be a sun. I made sure the darkest colour in the sun sphere was in its centre, and that the bird's lightest colours were also in its centre. This made sure the bird was easily discernable from the sun.
The company name was in Lithos Pro font, which was already installed on the system. At first I didn't think that the words were terribly visible, so I thought of adding the whisps behind them to try and make them more visible. I used yellow, orange and red to try and simulate the idea of sand. While I do think that the sand effect worked rather well, the whisps felt like an unnecessary obstruction that just made the image messier.
I decided to remove the whisps, and felt that the logo was made considerably when they were gone. However, I think there would still be problems with visibility when the logo was used in print and electronic contexts. If this was explored further, I would experiment with different fonts and font effects.
With this version I decided to try and simplify the bird and rounding off the sharp edges. I superimposed the company name on the logo image. The font I used was Harrington, which was already installed on the system. I changed the colours as I felt the round edges didn't fit the red and yellows.
This is perhaps my least favourite version as I felt the rounded edges made the bird look more like a fairy cake than anything else.
Out of these I would say my favourites were the red-yellow bird with the crimson feather, the crimson bird and the compact feather/company name logo.
Beyond these, I had A LOT of ideas with regard what to try to improve the look. Many of these were with regard to slight changes in positioning and layout and colour combinations. However, due to time constraints, I decided to stop here as I felt I had a nice rounded roster of variations.
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