ElfQuest Fan Art

What? No comments on this? I absolutely love it! Love the grit and the colors, their attitude and the leaf framing! As you want honest feedback, the only thing that bothers me ever so slightly is the gleaming Oakleaf-Holt logo. I think it doesn't fit the tone of the picture and is drawing attention to itself too much. Attention whore logo! I think the titles below fit much better. Total nitpicking, though! It looks awesome and it's brave to tackle such a project. I have done it, so I know...

First -- I love that you did a "cover" for this story.    That just fits in so well with the graphic-story style.  And I like that you chose to make it a close focus on the characters.  It's really intriguing that way. It works well as something to get a reader interested in the story to come -- what's up with the expressions and interactino that we can see?  I think it's a nice approach, as opposed to what one often thinks of as the cover to a comic book, which is something that highlights a key scene from the story, often doing it in a more elaborate way.

Second -- yeah, that logo.  I see what Treefox means.  Also -- because the "Oakleaf Holt" part is bright and gleaming, but the actual title of the story is done in a different style, and in colors closer to that of the rest of the picture, the story-title kind of "disappears".

I'd agree with you that I wouldn't have made it smaller, either.  But personally, I probably would have been more willing to change it slightly to work on the page.  As in, I probably would have rearranged it so that it wasn't all on one line, but with "Oakleaf" on a top line and "Holt" on a bottom line, allowing both words to be a bit bigger.

Now, your teacher is correct, I think, that at the very least, you want to be really careful about any changes you make to a logo -- even one that is "just" text. But I think the considerations of how to treat a logo are more dynamic than that.  That is, a logo isn't static, either.  When you look around at logos in business, you see that they're created so that they have multiple points of identification, so that they can appear in different media and in different color combinations, even, and yet still remain recognizable and distinct.  After all, the most important aspect of a logo is just, "when people see this, do they automatically associate it with the thing it represents?"  Thus, you can ask yourself questions about, "how much about a logo can be changed, and still retain that essential recognizability?"

So looking at the Oakleaf Holt logo, what strikes me is that it has several things going for it -- not just colors, but a distinct font.  And honestly, the latter is more important to its recognizability than any other factor.  Although, I'd probably also say that the color palette itself can be considered important.  (I think that some commercial graphic designers, and companies, differ on this point.  I'm maybe a little conservative about it.)  What I mean is, the "cool" colors you use are just as important to the logo's and group's identity as the shape of it (which, here, means the font).  If this logo was done in oranges and reds, it might not seem as characteristic of the group… although the font would still make it recognizable.

I guess what I'm saying, in conclusion, is that you've done such a good job of creating a distinctive text-logo, that you can afford to render it in multiple ways, and it will still "say" Oakleaf Holt to people. 

 (My dad was also a graphic designer, and for most of my youth his job was designing "branding" packages for companies, including logos.  So I got to see a lot of examples of text-based logos, and also, packages that would show both "here is how the logo looks when it's done all fancy" versus "here is how it looks done in a single color, embroidered on the front of a baseball cap".)

These Rascals are just Worth looking at.  Handsome and moody.  You can tell you have a great handle on these PC'S personalities DREAMCAT.  Bravo.