I need design ideas for the logo of a "soft" construction company?

Question

I'm trying to design a website for a good friend's construction company, Goodwill Builders (Slogan: "Building for you as we would build for us").
The guy that runs it believes very much in peace and spirituality. His company has been building portable buildings for the last 15 years, branching into custom homes in the last five years or so. (Pictures of their work can be found at their current site, www.goodwillbuilders.com, but be warned that the site design and layout is terrible. I did not design the monstrosity).
I need help constructing a logo for the business. The message I want to convey is the owner's philosophy (peace, forgiveness, happiness) but I don't want to lose the solidness of a construction company. Although I certainly don't expect anyone to actually design a logo for me, I'd very much appreciate any tips in regard to what color scheme I should use and any specific ideas you have about what the logo (or the entire site) should look like.

Answer 1

I'd suggest to do something with the slogan. It says that they would build as it was for their own, so for this I'd use a hand (protection, feel safe, ...) shaped as a roof ^, underneath the hand-roof you could put the name of the firm in a solid font (strongness of the houses) in two lines: first goodwill, underneath: builders (representing a house)
To underline the peace, you can always include a dove flying above the 'house'...

Depending of the materials they use (you can put in some structures as background, but softly otherwise it's bad.) Use warm colours like creme, browns, oranges - a house is meant to live in so it has to be inviting (blue is rather industrial so I would advice not to use this)also keep your colour scheme simple:don't use to many colours! otherwise it comes confusing.

Also put in some nice inviting pictures, cause nice pictures often invite persons to look into it. If they are cold and distant they don't get a good feeling about it and possibly move on to another site...

Answer 2

your right the site looks like it was some high school project..
I didnt spend much time but seeing as he uses words like Lakota Homes and leanto's I would pick a western/native motief.

maybe a log font and something like the logo like a prayer wheel, the links making up the spokes? do that as an image map.
or better yet a png so you can add flyout sub's...

scatter a bit of farm and ranch stuff around, too
things like a lasso around a picture. or an old rusty tractor
that kind of thing....
remember when it comes to homes it's the ladies who decide so add lots of pictures of kitchens and the master bed rooms... make then real pretty!

Answer 3

Shaking hands....(hand in hand)..always denotes a positive feeling, trustworthiness, etc. Insert on a background of either rainbow, house, sun, anything positive. Needs to be contemporarily smart, clean lines. Either a drawing of hands or actual hands would be cool on an illustrated background. Hope this helps.