What also struck me in the grocery was the thought of appropriate uses for the treatment. Most of my initial associations with this treatment was that it had something to do with food. So I kept my eyes open for more examples. I even noticed that Coca-Cola could loosely fit in this category. Throw Corn Nuts in the mix as well. Then, a trip to my local book store shattered my concept of the treatment just being for edibles. Fast Company had successfully used this treatment, and I knew that there were many others that I was failing to think of. I then set out on a little more rigorous search for more examples.

o Inside C

Doing an informal search on Brands of the World yielded more examples, many of which had nothing to do with consumables and most of which were poorly done. I started encountering many of these logos that used san serif typefaces (which wasn’t very common in the grocery store). To the designers of these logos, it seems that the circular “o” or “a” inside the “C” was a good way to show technology or maybe a derivative of their product. I can see the wheels turning. “Hey, we sell pipe, lets put the ‘o’ inside the ‘C’ and it will look like a pipe.” This isn’t the worst concept in the world, but the examples of this working well, are few and far between.

One thing I also discovered while searching through hundreds of logos, was that this was not a common treatment. The opportunity would seem to present itself with any logo project that involved this combination of letters, but rarely did the designer partake in this indulgence. Is it just too hard to pull off? Did the designers just not see the opportunity? Do designers not like to mess around with making the tweaks necessary for this to work? Or, Did the designers realize that this should only be used in appropriate situations?

o Inside C (a few you probably won’t recognize)

So what is an appropriate situation for this kind of thing? The vowel inside the “C” does add a unique quality that isn’t going to be reproducible when someone uses your chosen logo typeface in Word. It obviously also adds some irregularity to the logotype. When used in a good way (and usually with a serif typeface) this irregularity often gives a feeling of authenticity. This is where I think it is best used in the grocery store. This adds one more home grown artifact to balance out the giant conglomerate sameness.

a Inside C

After doing my informal search I also realized that there were more successful uses of the “o” inside the “C” than the “a”. I guess it should have been fairly obvious that the “o” fits better inside the “C”.

Next time you design a logo for a cookie shop, coffee blend, local cafe, cookbook company, etc., make sure you weigh all of you options before implanting that vowel. Every vowel is important and has its place in our language. Is that place inside an uppercase “C”?