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Showing your design prototype to friends can be hit-or-miss. Although they probably have your best interest at heart, they sometimes won't even understand what graphic design is used for. Even if they react strongly to a design, they may have a difficult time explaining it to you in a constructive way. Unless they are graphic designers themselves, take the opinions of your friends with a grain of salt. Don't ignore them, though. Getting a diverse array of opinions is valuable, even when they're poorly communicated. Remember that your product will eventually be exposed to the whole world, and a good logo will aim to communicate effectively with as many people as possible. Most of those people will not be branding experts.
Your colleagues should be much more familiar with your business and your goals, so always solicit them for input, too. Their advice should be sought less for aesthetic critique and more for practicality, communicability, and adherence to your business's mission. Your colleagues will probably realize this themselves, and will usually cut to giving you their direct and relevant opinion immediately. You might expect your colleagues to operate on a similar wavelength to you, so their opinion may be more homogeneous than those of your friends or customers. In any case, simply by having more eyes on your logo, you can catch and improve critical details.
Of course, your logo is ultimately used to communicate with your customers, so gather their feedback, too. Open up Twitter, Facebook, your email list, or whatever you use to communicate with your customers and send them your brand prototype. This is the most important place to get feedback, because it reveals what your product or service means to the people who use it. Sometimes, your own interpretation of your brand differs from the consensus of your patrons, and this is valuable to know. The only difficulty with customer feedback is that the signal-to-noise ratio can be quite high, so picking through and interpreting it can be tedious.
You should consider the graphic design experience of everyone who gives you feedback. Those without any design experience may have difficulty communicating their feelings about your logo, but they will usually be honest, and their opinions should be accounted for; those with a lot of graphic design experience will help you optimize your logo to the best of their ability. However, avoid at all costs the self-proclaimed designer hobbyist. These people know some general rules about graphic design and branding, but often misapply them. Their corrections are often unnecessary, since they're used to strengthen the designer's ego rather than the design.
Telling a hobbyist from a professional isn't difficult once you know what to look for. A hobbyist may speak in nebulous and arbitrary design terms: "This logo needs more contrast," or, "The balance is off" are examples of things you might hear from them. The hobbyist's corrections are made only to masquerade their supposed expertise, and just as often as not, their advice can affect your design to its detriment. On the other hand, a professional should illustrate how your logo can be optimized clearly, specifically, and in detail.
The interesting thing about graphic design is that, to be made effective, an objective eye must be turned toward a piece that elicits a subjective feeling. It's easy to imagine that the way you feel about your logo is the only way one could possibly feel about it. Ultimately, your brand is your own to create. However, you'd be wise to direct many critical eyes toward it before you unleash it upon the world. When it comes to graphic design, it's best to use your judgment before your instincts. Before finalizing your own judgment, solicit the judgment of many others.
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