What I was trying to do, was reference the Evernote logo, without trying to copy it, but still making the J of Joplin clearly evident.
Whether you appreciate the Evernote link or not, that's probably why the majority of us are here, and regardless of this, the link with an elephant and remembering is still relevant.
Icons which are just simple letters don't work well or look good, and aren't meaningful or memorable to people.
The Adobe Creative suite logos are letters, but they are related to the Periodic Table and they are some of the best known applications in the world.
A simple J on its own is not good enough for a serious capable application in my humble opinion...
I’m no designer, but in my opinion the single dark blue colour combined with the thick serif font gives off too much of an old corporate/paper office vibe (especially the second blue variation).
I do like the idea of incorporating an elephant motif for the reasons you’ve given.
That is a modern serif font, not a traditional one. Sony and IBM are modern slab serif logotypes, as was the original Google. Don't forget Honda, Gap, KFC, Mercedes, the original Yahoo, and most newspapers which have updated their logos, still use serif fonts, but modern slab serif versions.
Tech companies tend to use sanserif Humanist/Grotesk fonts, but fashion and publishing still tend to stick to serifs.
Evernote has a slab serif font, but that's not why I chose one. I chose a slab serif font because the top edge gives you the bump on the top of the head where the ears join!
I really like this version, but will avoid using rounded icons, or at least will use a rounded one when makes sense (i.e.: macOS version) but keep a sort of square box for the rest (like Windows or iPhone / iPad version).
Also the serif font used in your proposal with bold Joplin letters and a low distance between characters is great. I really really like it!!! hope at some point we can use it or have a poll or something like that -but current branding needs a rework.
