Curious what others think of the icon progression? There was an article a week or so ago about how all cool/crazy/distinctive logo designs trend to boring sameness.
The end design looks like something I'd expect to see on the Delta app I download when I fly and promptly redelete afterwards.
My person favorite, for reasons I don't understand, is the center icon in the first column. I don't know why. I just like it's distinctiveness.
I prefer it pre-colour too. I have no idea why they thought the ones that scream 'messaging app' were a good idea. The face ones are weird.
I think there's two jobs involved really though, and (as an armchair expert who's never done it) that ideally you do the first one of roughing out an idea for what it should look like yourself. The second job is refining it, tweaking the edges, weight, choosing exactly the right colour, etc.
Again as someone who's never had the luxury of having to do it, I think I'd request those things separately on Fiverr/Upwork/whatever and not pay a lot for it. 1) Here's some info about my company, give me 25 distinct rough sketches for a logo; 2) I like this logo, please be designery and refine it for me. You could even break (1) up and hire 5 people to give you 5 each or whatever.
I think someone else in the thread from a design studio said it best: (roughly) "You pay a design firm to filter through all the designs and present a maximum of three to the client." The three should be wildly different, tested to some degree, but each compelling in their own way. Then you take the one that resonates with the client and tweak.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with the parent that something "fun" was lost in the transition from the original logo to the new one. From the mock-ups, I can tell that the client definitely wanted to maintain the green cursor, which is good, but likely trusted the designers to know the market for remote KVM (which I've used for years), which doesn't conjure a physical plane - more of you being a pilot - in control. It's possible the client wanted to keep the logo really simple to make it 3D-printable.
What's done is done, but just for fun, I mocked-up a logo [0] (posted on another response as well) that reflects the original character of the company in a modern format - at least to me. Corporate branding is critical, and nailing the logo has traditionally been a difficult task.
The end design looks like something I'd expect to see on the Delta app I download when I fly and promptly redelete afterwards.
My person favorite, for reasons I don't understand, is the center icon in the first column. I don't know why. I just like it's distinctiveness.