Dead Logos
by Donovan Beery, (4 comments)
Tom’s post last week on Sears was a great reminder of the ever changing identities of companies today. I myself am already waiting for the retro shirts with the full-caps version printed in velvet.
Researching (which is now just another word for a Google search) the new logo brought me to the attention of Logo R.I.P. � a collection of past logos that will be missed to varying degrees (Sears was absent from the list at the time of this post). Just another reminder of how even the work we think will be around for a while has a limited shelf life.
My ‘research’ ended when I ran across the old UPS logo that was replaced with a gradiant and a swoosh � I became so enraged I could read no further. In fact, the mention of this just now has made me too enraged to finish this post. Terrible.
Comments (4)
Adrian said:
At the risk of enraging you further, what would you say if I said I like the new UPS logo. That is always a fun debate. Actually I don’t like it any more than I liked the old one (blasphemy, I know. Paul Rand would be ashamed of me), but I do like their “brown” campaign. I love the FedEx vs. UPS battle. And who is the newcomer in the war? I forgot their name…
I haven’t had a chance to visit Logo R.I.P yet, but it sounds good. Is anyone else having trouble connecting to their site?
Posted on September 17, 2004
Mark said:
Paul Rand had wanted to update the UPS logo as he felt it had become dated but UPS refused. Pitty we will never see just what he had in mind.
Posted on September 19, 2004
Donovan Beery said:
Honestly, my first impression was that the new mark was decent, as I always saw it with the entire new campaign. It wasn’t until I saw it on a can coozie in a solid black that I really started to think that this mark would not age well.
Posted on September 22, 2004
Bennett said:
Mark,
I would also like to see how Rand would have updated the UPS logo. I was reading an article on why UPS changed their logo and one of these reasons struck me funny. The executive being interviewed said that they don’t encourage people to tie their packages as it is shown in the logo. People weren’t supposed to tie up their packages when Rand did the logo in the first place. In A Designer’s Art, Rand talks about that very same argument he had with UPS when he first presented the logo. I guess he only won the argument for a few decades.
One of Rand’s logos I would like to see is the updated Ford logo that he started working on, but Ford backed out of.
Posted on September 27, 2004