Voila – The New Logo


You may recall that a few months back I involved you all in a logo re-design project. The subject logo was for another site I have big plans for, called “Selling to Small Businesses.”

At the time I had been using a free WordPress template and a text based site name — really didn’t have a logo at all.  The site looked pretty blah and like something that had been slapped up quickly (see image at left).

So I went to Logoworks and went through the design process there.  I also got input from the community here — over 114 comments on one of the posts alone.  When you count up the comments on all the different posts as well as the emails and Twitter messages I got, it was over 200 comments total!

After readers like you weighed in, the result was a professional-looking yet informal logo using a red paper clip graphic. The final logo met my needs because it:

  • managed to break up the really long  domain name (27 letters) into something a human can actually read  🙂
  • kept to the red, white and black colors of all my business sites
  • is simple and easy to read at a glance
  • is businesslike, in keeping with the B2B nature of the site, yet looks a tad informal and not too corporate-ish (hey I’m proud of running a small business)
  • fit my bootstrapped budget

I also got the site redesigned to match the new logo, and included some new interactive features.

Thank you SO MUCH for your input — what more can I say about all your help?

Please check out the new logo at Selling to Small Businesses.  What do you think?

16 Comments ▼

Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

16 Reactions
  1. It looks great Anita! Clear and simple. What a great idea to get over 100 votes to make sure you get an objective view of the logo candidates.

  2. I really like the new logo and the new site. It’s not quite as hip as this site is, but it’s still very good.

  3. Long time reader and fan of your blog, but not sure what the paper clip has to do with selling to small businesses.

    I personally would have went with a site like Worth1000.com. You can post up a ‘contest’ to design a logo and receive around 30-40 submissions. Then the society of thousands of people vote on the best design according to your specifications. Highly recommend checking it out next time. Direct link to the logo contests here:
    http://www.worth1000.com/cdir.asp?display=jackpot&filter=f.format_id=4

    Regards,
    Vitaliy Levit

  4. Looks great…simple, yet eye catching. That’s a winning combination. Nice work!!

    Matt

  5. Nice! 🙂

  6. The paperclip ads a nice touch. For some reason, I associate paper clips with small businesses and binder clips with large businesses. While that may seem strange, it works great for what you’re trying to do. Cheers!

  7. Anita, this was a geat exercise of involving your community with the development of your business whch any small business can use as an example. The site looks a lot more engaging.

  8. Anita, very well done. Nice, clean look that allows the content to stand out. I really like the paper clip theme. Congratulations! You’ve got a winner there.

  9. The new logo and the new layout look great. Nicely organized and easy to navigate. Great job. 🙂

  10. Jonathan (loves Innovative Marketing)

    Clean, simple and to the point. Great logo!

  11. I really like the current look! Nice job!

  12. I agree. It looked better than the previous design you cited above.

  13. I also have visited a while back at Selling to Small Business site and I have to agree that it looks better than the previous one.

    I have a question: I think the blog title is already in an image format. Will it not affect a little on the SEO part? I am not an SEO expert but I was thinking that the blog title which is in linkable text format could somehow vote for your site — on page optimization.

  14. The logo looks great. It works together. I like how the words are stacked rather than in a straight line. Great logos are often simple, and this one pulls that off well.

  15. Congratulations on the new logo and the new online presence. Thank you for sharing your strategy.

  16. Logo Design Monster

    I like the new logo and the work you have done to the site. Thanks for sharing with us.