looking for some opinions

Hi,
so I am opening a business and the logo is very important to me. Had moonglare make me something, looked great, I made some edits and heres the finished product.
Looking for some critique, let me know what you think

 

Compared to the other text, looks uneven and Pixelated \: If you could maybe clean it up a bit and make it flat it would look a lot better

 

First one:
There's no cohesive design. You've got three different shades of gray, three different strength of inner-shadow (the top and bottom elements having none at all), and uneven centering. The logo shape is interesting, but the execution is abysmal, a finished logo project should never be pixels, look into adobe illustrator and attempt vector design. You'll get a much smoother AND scalable final result.

Second one:
More consistency than the first, the transition from light border to heavy border is clunky and could be done differently to achieve the same design element you're looking for in a more graceful way. Again, pixelated, look into vector graphics. And last thing: you can't really call this a logo, the size isn't conducive for many places you'd need to include this logo. It's fine for a site banner, letter heads, and product placement (since vapes tend to be that elongated shape anyway), but would be useless for smaller media that require a more compact design.


That being said, I like the concept for the "V" shape, it looks a little closer to a cigarette than a vaporizer, but what do I know, I don't vape. Smooth it out, and you've got a great start.

 

First: I'm going to make the shades more consistent and make everything centered. Do you recommend I ditch the inner shadow entirely? or should I only use it on one thing or all the same?

Second:Going to learn to vector images in illustrator. Yeah, this is just a banner - the first will be the logo. What could I do to make the boarder transition a little better?

 

Inner shadow is a neat design element, and is still contemporary, but it's also gimmicky. You won't find ANY fortune 500 companies with this effect in their logo simply because simplicity is preferred, and simplistic designs are easier to make modular and scalable.

To improve the border, I would just suggest either tapering the horizontal lines from thick to thin smoothly, otherwise justifying the thin line to the outermost edge of the thick line. Example below:

The top example is just my aesthetic preference, but that doesn't mean the second option isn't a viable design. I just personally prefer the first.

 

Thank you very much for your help, I'll report back when I make some changes and see what you think!

 

What do you think?

 

Thanks!

 

Did you live trace it in illustrator? In some cases, this can work out quite well.. but not here. I suggest completely re-designing it in illustrator.

Copy the original over and trace it with a pen if you have to, you'll have the perfect curves without the wonky live trace after effect.

 

Yeah so i had it trace it by itself, you think this makes it look bad? Wouldn't tracing it by hand not be as accurate?
Is that why the edges kind of rounded after I traced it using the auto trace?