16 May 2007

[logo_design] Sitemeter's New Logo

808 Dig, if you will, the piccy to the right. This is part of the new identity for a utility that many of us use in its pay incarnation, and most of us use in its free incarnation.

Sitemeter has always been a ripping good tool. If you want to have some idea of what people are coming to read, see, or do at your blog or website, just drop a few lines of javascript and bingo, you got it.

The new logo is static, replacing that rotating Lucite™ cube that is so very familiar. I must say, it's an improvement. There's a certain line of logic that animated GIFs are bells and whistles for thier own sake, and most of the time I've found this to be true. The old cube was cute and tricksy; the new logo, with its comparative restraint, seems more mature and polished.

The mission of Sitemeter is expressed very well by the small bars going away from the type on the right, and unity is maintained by letting the graphic invade the space under the minuscule "r" ever-so-slightly. And the currently-somewhat-faddish device of varying a point of style in the type (in this case the color) to create interest and dynamic tension is used well, with the word "meter" forming a distinct yet unified bridge between the concept of "site" and the thing used to measure it.

It's a new design that works.

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2 comments:

LeLo said...

Good crit. I agree, and like it too. It wouldn't work if any of the letters in the logotype were descenders: lucky them. I don't get the color though. It feels cold, and the green/grey thing, I might like it with a more acidic green, or a contrast color for site, like coral or aqua or orange. It would be fun to see this logo animated, with a pulsating starting in the letters and moving to the right into the bars. I like this integrated mark.

Samuel John Klein said...

Thanks for the prop, Lelo. Sorry to take so long to respond...I thought I had, but I looked back here and...hey, where was my reply?

Anywhoozle, I have a theory about the color palette. I'm thinking that someone sat down, lit the joss-sticks, and said "what to us reflects sober, cool, serious?". I think they went with the colors just for that reason–the coolness of the colors suggest an organization who is going to tally your stats and take it very seriously indeed.

I'm of something of a different mind than you about the animation, tho. I liked the old rotating cube, thought it was engaging, but it was kind of distracting...on a stats page, I'd want the stats to take center stage, and a plain, no-nonsense graphic element keeps the name front and center without demanding that you look at it instead of the stats.

Animated GIFs are fine for web pages made by teenagers with FrontPage, but they should be used sparingly (if at all, in my arrogant opinion) in web page services meant for the serious blogger/webmaster. That's just my take on it, of course.