Guys, I am usually very reluctant to give any feedback in these kind of situations, because artistic people in general have low tolerance for criticism. And when I say something it does more bad than good. On the other hand, taking into account how much efforts everybody has applied here, it would be impolite of me just to say "I take this" without even bothering to give any explanations. So, please, don't take it personally. I am just trying to be educational within my limited abilities (I don't have any background with design and I am not an expert in any way ). Nevertheless, here is the trick that you may find useful. Replace all the text in the logo with some meaningless letter combinations (remember "lorem ipsum", the line in russian that does not make any sense for you works as well I guess). Now try to distantiate from what you already know about the logo, look at it for like 10 seconds and write down the very first sentence that comes up to your mind. Definitely these associations are personal and depend very much on your background. Here is my try. "A literary competition is underway at our school." -------------------------------- "Staples has vinyl office binders on sale." -------------------------------- In general if you can write this sentence it is not a good sign. That means that this picture is already taken from collection of images that you keep in your brain and strongly associated with something else. It is about the same as domain name can be taken, but not so formal, naturally. There is no official registry that holds these type of associations. The best thing is if you have overall positive impression about the picture and can say with a confidence that "It has something to do with ... " (insert the subject/category), but nothing more than that. If it is the right category then you hit the target. If you can not think about anything and your mind is completely blanked out, it is also good. That means that picture is free and there is a potential to build a strong corporate image around it.
And here are the results: Winner: coolwanz (the second logo variant) $10 special participation prizes: jboo14, designX, crowquill (I would like to pay 10 bucks to these 3 people just as a token of appreciation for taking part in this contest - please pm me your paypal email) Attached is a final roundup - an attempt to compare all logo's we liked the most. Just to take quick glance at all of them at once. Don't pay attention to details (font sizes, for example). Thanks to all the people who responded. I am going to say a few final words later.
Thanks henryb for the token of appreciation. The feedback you provided in this thread is really useful for designers. Sending PM now. Congrats coolwanz. Deserving entry.
Thank You henryb for selecting my design. Congrats to fellow designers as well: jboo14, designX, crowquill. Well done all.