Logo Design for Oil Refinary California based company

CalEnergy is a newly established group of oil industry specialists from Los Angeles in need of logo, website and some corporate print job. I began with a logo design session witch produced 5 samples. I'll try to show the creation process behind these samples.

1. First logo is a simple play with some broken lines of text and a graphic element, in this case part of an oil pump. Notice the angle I transfer from the font into the oil pump to create unity. This one is simple and balanced, but lack of emotional value and the oil pump element is not recognizable enough.

2. This one based on a bear from the California flag. Clients, originally are Russian, so a bear make a good double symbol for Russian and California natural life. Bear's pose suggests the animal in search for food, water. It does reflect the nature of the company's profile: Cal Energy is in the oil recourses business. Search and discovery is the heart of their business.
Logo works on symbolic level, like "Lehman brothers bull". Here is some good examples of animals use in logos.

3. This one draws on a simetry to create strong apeal. Triangle is in the core of the shape. Two identical, hollow triangles mirroing eachother, make an oil pump tower. Oil drop complete the picture, providing attachment to the industry.

4. Take flame, cut it in half. Take an oil drop, cut the bottom half off and flip it 180. Looks like a tourch now, right? We got a golden logo here. Simple, fitting and elegant. The only problem here is the "T" shape - not as compact as I'd like logos to be shaped. Next one is better in this scence.

5. And a winner is... Yes, the one bellow. The client's choice and actualy my favorite. It is compact, well ballanced, visualy engaging. Compact logo is very important - meaning it will fit well on business cards, t-shirts, website headers.