This is a logo I made for a company called "MA." In Japanese, "ma" means the interval between all things temporal and spacial. It is basically negative space. In this logo, the contrast between the dark shapes and the light shapes defines the letters hidden in the logo. The bottom logo is the better because there is added tonal and color contrast and between the blue and the black, further emphasize the A making it easier to see. In the color logo, The M is created by the contrast of logo and background. The A is created by the contrast of the shapes and colors within the logo. I overlapped the blue over the A to make the A less visible because I want to steer people away from seeing the A before the M. This logo is successful because it makes use of two different kinds of contrast: contrast between content and non-content; and contrast between inner colors. There is also a contrast in balance. The contrast in balance is seen in the overlapping of the blue on top of the black, and from the chunk missing out of the black piece. This is done in order to differentiate the A.
I picked this logo on the left because it also utilizes blue and black, yet fails to use contrast in a constructive manner. My logo is better because there is greater tonal contrast between the blues and the blacks. Contrast is used poorly in this logo because it fails in making the letters visible. The 'Dry cleaners' tone of blue is too dark to effectively contrast with the black background; consequently, the letters are not visible. The tonal contrast between the yellow and the black is too much so it takes up all of the eye's attention away from the letters inside. This is because the eye is attracted to heavy contrast. The two things that have more contrast than the yellow is between the black box and the negative space that surrounds it, and between the button down shirt illustration. The logo does not take advantage of defining meaningful shapes with the use of negative space. The whole logo is imprisoned within the black box. The illustration is too ambiguous because it does not use contrast to define the shadows of the shirt, which would make it look more like a shirt. Instead, contrast is used o define the seams of the shirt. The poor use of contrast results in a terrible logo. For something that is meant to be read outside from a car window, while the car is moving, this logo is completely unreadable. 
To illustrate my point, I redesigned a very basic version of the terrible logo above that is at least readable. This could be seen from a moving car because it utilizes the properties of contrast better. Aside from contrast, yellow and blue mixed together make green which makes people subconsciously thing of slime, frogs, poison, and chemicals. The darkness further emphasizes the color effect. Blue and white on the other hand are associated with cleanliness. The logo/sign I made also has a white shirt verses the black shirt of the other logo. It is much more impressive for a dry cleaners to be able to clean a white shirt rather than a black shirt. Interestingly enough, if you invert the colors of the bad logo, it makes the one I designed, except with yellow letters. That was totally a coincidence!
I guess if I were consulting for that company company, I would simply tell them to invert their colors and make the text black. It actually looks pretty nice.
