for the contest Exploding Pants, Inc. needs a logo...
Submitted design #9
Fully vector and a bit web 2.0 ;)
Thanks for submitting! Yours is by far the most professional comp we've seen. That said, we are not big into calling out the X in the name. It sort of reminds us of eXtreme sports. How about focusing less on the ligature and more on the name?
Submitted design #32
"We're looking for a striking logo and color palette to kick start our software company's brand."
As a software company I think you need to have logotype, because the brand name is too long. why?
Because not everywhere you can add typologo. Let me give an example:
Someday you need to have software icon, and Exploding Pants inc in 16 x 16 icon is kind a problem to implement, thats why you need to have your sign.
Let me give some examples. Yahoo! have logo but they use Y! too much Gmail have same thing. and Fanatasy Interactive (f-i.com), a long name like yours have they sign and you are trying to use it in any case because they want to make a brand, like Nike sign, you just need to see that sing and automatically know what's about.
I'm just sharing my knowledge and experience to convince whats better, not to choose mine.
Its like when you make cars you don't need to put a car in logo, but a logo in car :).
Your most recent submission is much better, thanks! And we agree that having a strong ligature is most important to developing brand recognition.