Juggling man design blog: A critique of the mixx.com logo

So everyone's talking about Mixx. Even me! Digg clone? Innovative social media? The latest fad? But no one is mentioning that logo. For all you logoholic designers I offer a critique of the mixx.com mark.

Let's start with the name. Good concept in my opinion. The expression describes the happenings of such a site. A "mix" of news, articles, photos and assorted tidbits. However, the adding of an extra X smacks of Digg clone-ism. And my question is, "why?" What's the use of the additional x? I suppose Mix.com was already taken... Meh. I smell fad.

Name aside the graphic itself is incredibly weak it does not read well as a mixing bowl (which is horribly obvious). I asked a few people completely unfamiliar with Mixx if they could decipher what the graphic was with the name, "a microphone?" "a gas gauge?" "dunno". And they are absolutely right. The lack of contrast and depth makes for a very static and boring mark that resembles little of what the name suggests. And what's with the 53 000 different variations? None of them strong marks.
Pick one!

There are a few things right with this. The dimensions of the graphic for instance. It needs to fit in a square to come up nice at the beginning of a url and good job avoiding all the web 2.0 shiny-ness too (but lose those gradients please). I'll also applaud the consistent use of the color scheme.

The typography is half decent but is a little bland. The kerning seems right and alignment is tight. Unfortunately there was lots of potential for using those 2 Xs to create the graphic and make for a very slick and subtle mark. This doesn't look like a very well thought out mark to me.

Let's hope the obvious problems are fixed before beta ends. The competition is stiff and there are a lot of competitors with nice marks out there.

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