That's the Emet!

I hadn't heard of "Emet" and had to look it up. A steampunk robot!!!! WOoOOoooHooOOO! How cool is that??!!

Pretty cool.

Makes you long for a feature length movie though.

Ohh.... that's really cool, and completely unintentional! I had meant "Emet" to stand in for the word "Truth". In legends, the Hebrews believe that marking the golem with the Hebrew word Emet will bring the golem to life. To deactivate it, you erase the E, changing the word to "Met", which is Hebrew for "Death". I remember reading about it in "The Adventures of Cavalier and Klay".

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem

*Edited w/ link to wikipedia page

That's what I figured you were talking about, but when wammie said Steam Punk Robot related to Emet I had to hunt it down.

Everyone, I've come up with a new banner design. Hope you like it! Please respond with comments or suggestions; I'd like for us to decide on a new banner this week if possible. I will be on vacation next week and won't be able to work on graphics .

Heh, OK. Thanks for your continued work on these. Thanks also for being professional about criticism (and I mean that very sincerely).

In this banner, tho:

1) Too many typefaces. I know it's not easy, but pick one.
2) Looks like "Twin Cities Taker". Trying to use the logo elements in the wording is maybe too much. Why not use the logo whole & full size, though? I think it's more important than the little gear.
3) You've only used half of the banner box. I get that this was probably a design choice, but visually it would work better if the non-empty space wasn't crowded... and it really is. Blank space also makes more sense in seriously stark, modern design; think Michael Graves. Now, steampunk isn't exactly baroque (affectedly busy & drenched in extraneous flourishes), but it is supposed to evoke Victorian prosperity, growth, and invention. So go ahead & spread out a little; you've got room to breathe.

Thanks Theo! Hey, no problem with the feedback. This should be a team project. I've got a little time now to work on it, so I'm running with the ball.

The fonts were meant to suggest woodwork ("carved" letters), metalwork, and electronics. And the idea was to enforce the that the central symbol was both a "T" and "M," if it was obscure to some. All of the blank space on the right is for room to put other things, like headline items, linkable graphics, and such, you know? In fact, the main menu items can be moved over there as well, even as a bitmap graphic with links or something. A little more work, but maybe for the future.

Does this look steampunk to you? I wasn't going for that, necessarily, in this design. Do you guys want to go steampunkish? That would be fun though. In the meantime, I'll do something with the symbol and typefaces.

Simplicity is a big factor in logo design.

I think we have a really great symbol and I don't think we need much more.

If you you do a case study of the logos out there the ones that are the most memorable are simple ones, and I think you have accomplished this with the symbol. As far as the banner goes I don't think we need to express the different types of things that we are doing as a group (I am not even sure if we will every be able to do that (hopefully not too!)). I think basically all we need to do is pick a decent font face and finalize the color scheme, I have no problem with the prominent red coloring scheme that we have now.

Thoughts on this?

I would prefer a solid color scheme rather than a wood grain or other simulated texture, it looks tacky to me.