Subscribe to this feedWhere's The Logo?

There's a cool restaurant right around the corner from our office in Hell's Kitchen that we often go to for after work drinks or brunch. It's got that sleek minimalist New York City vibe, which is a little rare in and around the grungy Port Authority section of our beloved neighborhood. When I tell my friends to meet us there I have to say that it's the minimalist white place on the northwest corner of...etc. The point is that the restaurant seems to take their minimalist chic all the way to having no name, no signage. (Actually, I later espied a little graphic symbol on their facade which, after careful analysis, revealed the name...)

There are a number of clubs and restaurants in the city that do this coy "no logo" thing. It's one extreme in branding. On the other end, of course, is just about everyone else whose identity, logo, icon or face is plastered on every conceivable everything. ("Make the logo bigger!")

Which brings me to our revamped, just-launched e9digital website. Cool, huh? But a lot of web developers and marketing-types might ask: Where's your logo? Or, they might point me to Google's ever-helpful Browser Size Chart which essentially shows silly designers like me just where to put my logo so that the poor dial-up guy on IE6 can see it (Top Left Corner!).

When I was designing our new site, I thought about my awesome sign-less Hell's Kitchen restaurant. As I mentioned earlier, it stands apart from the usual divey Irish pubs and 99 cent pizza places that dot the avenue. They serve really delicious and affordable comfort food in a hip, well-designed environment. And the staff there are a gregarious, attentively fun bunch. In spite of their sign-less state, they're noticeable and the neighborhood has deservedly embraced them.

I think of e9digital as something similarly awesome. We're also in the same part of Hell's Kitchen with the dumpy pizza stands and Dunkin Donuts, and we work in the highly cluttered and junk-filled web environment...but we stand out. We're a gregarious fun bunch (well, at least our President, Conrad is!) who also happen to be very attentive craftspeople. We cook up terrific logos and websites and marketing plans for passionate, smart clients...you get the picture.

So, that's why our logo isn't immediately visible in the top left corner. It used to be prominently displayed on earlier versions of our website, but since then I feel we've evolved into a shop that gets noticed for the great things we do...

Note: If you hover over the top left corner, you'll see that a part of a version of our logo is there. The "UI best practices" side of me couldn't ignore google's browser chart completely!