Stuck with poor logo/colors - Help!

[wdglide]

I need inspiration for both color scheme and site design. I am stuck with the client's logo. My dislike for it is so strong I caanot for the life of me come up with a color scheme for the site.

ANY suggestions or pointers to other pink sites would be appreciated. To make it worse he wants the site to have an elegant theme. I keep coming up with gray dominant color scheme, but the end up looking too harsh.

HELP!!

[aversion]

http://www.identityworks.com/

great resource for identity education, research and inspriation.

[wdglide]

Thnks.

Visited that site before. My problem is an existing poor logo.

I guess I'm really looking for advice on working with the color Pink for a "corporate" site (a home builder).

[big_k]

so, you have to keep the color/logo? or can you change the color of it?

if so, i'd change it to a slate blue kinda color... if not... well... i dunno

[wdglide]

No can do. That's the problem.

[OldAndUgly]

I created an example and posted it at http://www.usa.totoville.com/test/name_logo.gif

Take care,

George Crofton
usa@usa.totoville.com

[Tagore]

made this with Adobe Illustrator 11, it is a vector logo for a newspaper or newsletter. It is for 25$.

[JohnnySix]

Hi..

Pink is a difficult one, I too had to build a site around a shocking pink (#ff00ff) colour scheme.

I also came up with various shades of grey.

The project hasn't gone live yet, but essentially it boiled down to trying to offset the pink with various cooler colours.
I opted for a light sky blue grey, with a few desaturated blues of a darker tone and the odd pink highlight and pink titles.

It pretty much worked out, the best thing to do is go back to the old colour wheel reference of complimentary colours.

Flaskit is a great example of opposite colours working well together, yellow and blue (with addative colour) are opposites and make a nice combo together.

With clients I usually put together about 6-10 JPGs or basical html layouts for them to view with varous changes and colour options, especially if they have a strong idea of the company identity.

Hope that is some help to you

BTW - Hi Tagore, seen you on gamerforums

Cheers

John

[wdglide]

Thanks. I tried these looks, but they did not like them.

[OldAndUgly]

I have been experiencing some color shift with my monitor. So, I hope that the pinks are pink and the golds are gold on the following graphic...

http://www.usa.totoville.com/test/pink.htm

George Crofton

[JohnnySix]

Hi again, the design you have on the left is pretty nice man. I'd buy it

Did the client say exactly what they liked and what they didn't like?

I've had people flatly turn down a side, but when asked why it turned out to be something as simple as a font face, or ever something as stupid as the width of a table, the colour of a font, sometimes even if a font is in italics instead of bold :S

How much company print do you have to go from? Are you designing the whole brand/logo for them or reporducing a brochure digitally?

If you haven't already, I'd strongly suggest asking them a few questions about what they're hoping for from the site, what they like and what they don't like.

Cheers

John

[wdglide]

Thanks for the help!

There's a bit more history here with this client (but I won't bore you). However, you've motivated me to start fresh again with the client. I prefer the one on the left as well.

He also wanted a Flash splash page. I put together one (http://www.villahomes.net/splash.html) - he didn't like that one either. If you have a moment I'd appreciate your opinion on that as well.

I put up this post to gain back some of my sanity. I was beginning to think I was in the wrong career. This is just an overly picky client that provides little direction and only knows what they don't like.

Thanks again all!!!

[steiner_99]

try looking at the kids cool pink site

http://www.joshclancy.com

[teow]

Originally posted by wdglide
This is just an overly picky client that provides little direction and only knows what they don't like.

That is the same type of person that you will encounter 90% of your design career.

As for your splash page, its a little bare. You could try using photographs of people. That is to say, affliate the company as friendly to people, because by putting those pics of estates on the intro, I didn't get much since I already know that they are real estate agents.

Or, use more of a style applicable to the drawings you have on your main page. I think that would be really interesting to have a hand drawing one of those pictures (though you'd have to be both a good drawer and an animator). If you pulled it off, I'm sure your client would love it.

[wdglide]

[QUOTE]That is the same type of person that you will encounter 90% of your design career.[QUOTE]

Guess I'm overly optimistic - bordering on naive.

The only direction I recieved on the Flash page was to include those drawings - on a black page - about 15 seconds long. So thats what I put together

[caseywhitcher]

I really like you're layout you have above on the left also, I notice you altered the logo a bit, is that part of what they didn't like?

[wdglide]

No. The one at the top of this post is the one the wanted me to use. I only altered it to show them that with a little freedom I could accomplish a lot more.

You guys are motivating me to go back to the client and push the original design (my favorite, too).

Maybe I'll left him read this post

Thanks Everyone!!!!