Metablur: Logo for technical training/consultancy firm

metablur

Metablur is, or will be, a small brand (1-3 people, depending on project) to bring a few individual contractors together on technical projects. We focus on technical training and consulting, dealing with open source web application development and systems.

This includes training people in web-server languages like PHP/MySQL, Java, Perl, website development techniques and technologies, and setting up web platforms like Drupal, Joomla, Moodle, but also includes the decision-making consulting leading up to deploying such solutions.

As part of the consultancy, we also do database performance and optimisation consultation/seminars, including SQL Server and MySQL, along with Business Intelligence/Reporting/Analysis related to SQL Server.

We want the logo to attract two main audiences: the technical people who want us to come in and train/mentor them with a particular technology, and their non-technical bosses who sign the cheques.

So we want to be quirky enough to attract the techs, but serious enough to attract the suits. Challenging enough? :)

To start with, I have complete faith in your creative talents (having been a lurker for a while - kudos to you and your collective talent!), so will give you free rein to go with what you think is good. I'll be very actively rating and eliminating in the first few days, as I see what you're coming up with, so if you're quick off the mark, you'll get a chance to influence the direction, and if you're more careful, you can wait to see what ideas bubble to the top and inspire you.

Our website and our cards will have a light background, either white or a very light grey or beige, so the logo should suit that.

Some initial suggestions based on logos I've seen and liked here:
- something clean and not cluttered
- dark blues and possibly greens
- lowercase, so "metablur"
- sweeping graphic line or curve over/under/beside the logo or brand name (I've liked only a few logos with this, but not all)
- although it's easy to want to break it into "meta" and "blur", I'm leaning against graphically separating the two

But like I said, I'm not a graphics guy, and I trust you to go against my ideas if they're unattractive. So I won't be surprised if we end up choosing something that's got something completely different.

Because I'll be using the logo on a website and probably elsewhere, I'll be looking for SVG or some other vector-based file format. Thanks!