• US$870

• 241 designs

• 68 designers

Logo Design Brief

We are a nimble and resourceful team of web and marketing experts with top agency experience, dedicated to helping underdog microbusinesses succeed against large national corporations who aim to marginalize their brands, and take their market share. We fight for the little guys!

We are based in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C, near the Dulles Corridor and airport (http://www.metwashairports.com/dulles/dulles.htm), and the Udvar-Hazy National Space Center / Museum (http://airandspace.si.edu/visit/udvar-hazy-center), which houses some of world’s most advanced military aircraft.

Our primary services include:

• Furiously fast website refreshes and maintenance, and custom design and development;
• Super insightful digital marketing research, and strategy;
• Supportive and upLIFTing internet marketing coaching;
• Intelligent workflow automation, and “paperless office” conversions.

Our target customers are established local microbusinesses (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/microenterprise.asp) with less than 20 employees and revenues from $1-5 million. We are particularly interested in supporting family-owned companies, as we understand them intimately having grown up in successful small business families ourselves. We are targeting local retail stores and restaurants, trades (HVAC, plumbing, tailors, builders, mechanics), doctors, attorneys, consultants, and other service providers.

Small businesses power the American economy, yet they operate at a serious disadvantage in comparison to larger, monolithic corporations who can afford enterprise technology to advance their marketing strategies. We focus on bringing enterprise-grade solutions, insights, and performance to these small businesses, to LIFT them up and help them grow.

BRAND PROMISE
We will LIFT your business to new levels of performance online, and in your community.

BRAND PERSONALITY
Modern, hungry, eager, resourceful

BRAND VOICE
Respectful, honorable, supportive, encouraging: We work for the little guy because we care about him; we come from micro business families and backgrounds ourselves.

Energetic, enthusiastic, zealous: We are driven by small business’ success and potential for explosive growth.

CREATIVE DIRECTION
Positive, powerful, captivating: we like clean edges and imagery that communicating confidence, energy, and respect.

Modern, efficient, digital: we want something elegant to illustrate our efficient use of technology

Adventurous, energetic, upLIFTing: we want to come across as future-oriented and full of potential, eager to help small businesses reach new heights.

COLORS
BLACK
red and/or grey accents as necessary

TYPOGRAPHY
Crisp, sharp, and simple

IMAGERY
Rocket, rocket launching, lift-off, launch cloud from explosion
Space shuttle
Strong and fast air stream moving under and “LIFTING” up an airplane wing
Jet propulsion, turbine
1-UP, level-up, growth, acceleration

We LOVE simple and elegant negative space logos, and have uploaded some for your inspiration. The logo must be flat and work on both light (white) (necessary) and (ideally) dark backgrounds.

Thanks for participating—we can't wait to see what you come up with!

Updates

Whoa whoa whoa! Everybody slow down!

Most of the designs submitted so far have been eliminated. My feeling is that you all are submitting too quickly, and not putting enough thought into your work. While some of the uneliminated designs have been creative, almost all of them could have been more imaginative, more polished. There are still plenty more great ideas yet to be submitted, I'm sure. Don't rush it.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. If need be, I will extend the contest and allow more submissions. 

Added Friday, April 25, 2014

I'm beginning to feel that the rocket imagery has distracted you all. Most of the logos with rockets that have been eliminated were afterthoughts—I'm looking for something cohesive, not disjointed. All of the elements have to work together, not detract from each other. Unless you have a something original to submit.

There have been some GREAT launch cloud imagery. I would like to see someone make a more comprehensive launch cloud not just centered around the i or rocket element. Perhaps try to surround LIFT with a launch cloud, like GENNICAR and KEEM ALEXIS did. Notice that their concepts were interesting, and as such a have not been eliminated.

Pay attention to the surviving concepts. Learn from them. If you can see the eliminated designs, do not submit permutations of them. You can learn what not to submit from them. Pay attention.

Logos with hands, florklifts, hydraulic lifs, and obvious arrows need not apply; do not use those elements.

Pay attention to font type. Some of you made interesting choices with font, beyond just block text, including ANTONEOFULL, ENZZOK, and D.K. MEHTA. Good work!

CLOUDSHIFTER's is the only concept that uses negative space in an interesting and creative way. GREAT WORK. Can anyone else come up with another creative use of negative space??

Added Friday, April 25, 2014

Please stop submitting multiple iterations (colors, inversions, font type) of the same concept. You're wasting your time and my submission quota. If you do that, you will likely be IGNORED and I will have a more experience, thoughtful designer work with your concept.

Remember, this is about concepts, not iterations. Take your time, follow my design brief and rules, and you will be rewarded with good feedback.

Added Friday, April 25, 2014

Please stop submitting logos with stacked letters. It's rudimentary and has been tried and eliminated multiple times.
Added Friday, April 25, 2014

We're warming up—there are some REALLY cool designs on the table. Keep it up everyone, we're definitely getting somewhere now. Does anyone have any other non-rocket concepts to submit?

Cheers!

Added Friday, April 25, 2014

Wow—this is a very talented community; we'll definitely be running contests here again! We've had some remarkable concepts so far, but mostly just designs with rockets (which we emphasized in our brief). We have a few rocket finalists which we like very much; we're also waiting for one or two more revisions—you know who you are. However, we are curious if anyone has some clever and subtle wordmark concepts that don't include rockets or clouds or very obvious arrows. Great work everyone, and thanks for participating!
Added Saturday, April 26, 2014

Here's an example of a simple wordmark concept we like:

http://www.liftwebagency.com/files/lift-line.png

Feel free to iterate on this or diverge completely. Looking forward to some more quality submissions!

Added Saturday, April 26, 2014

Industry/Entity Type

Digital

Logo Text

Lift

Files