A Logotype I’m happy to meet…
As my thoughts turn towards my Spring semester courses, and particularly towards the Typography class I’ll be teaching for the first time I’m reminded of this recent logotype “find” that appeared in an on-line banner ad. It’s really refreshing to see an identity designer utilize a design approach that likely came straight out of a typography class in their past: communicate an idea purely through the use of type forms, type orientation, and type relationships.
My eyes were caught by this fairly delightful identity solution a few weeks ago – glad to continue to see moments of good visual wit popping up in the midst of many designs that we’d sooner ignore or forget online!
October 31st, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I’m not a fan of that logo. It makes the word “meetic” hard to read, especially with a name that is unfamiliar. The second (backwards) e reads as an “a” to me for some reason. Just my thoughts.
October 31st, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Which still reads the same in the end does it not? Meet-ic, Meat-ic… it works. Frankly, my eyes come back to the eHeart and I realize that it’s a backwards e.
Don’t understand the -ic though… maybe it could use a different ending? -orama, -er, -eriffic, or something =P
I like the use of typography though.
October 31st, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Yeah, ‘Meatic’, “All you need is A1″
I am
[a man]
Looking for
[a porterhouse]
Region
[medium rare]
…about the logo though, I agree that concept was there but the part of the execution that bugs me is the ends of the two e’s where they appear to drip or sag or melt or something.
Paul, are you gonna write about your classes like Nate did in his “My Typographic ReEducation” posts? Those were some good posts. (did I miss parts 4‚Äì11 of 11?)
October 31st, 2006 at 7:29 pm
I agree that it’s always nice to see a typographic solution to something that could have been way overdone with swooshes and gradations. That being said, it’s still not the execution it could have been. The way the ‘e’s meet at the bottom to form the point of the heart really bugs me.
I also think the name is terrible. “Meetic” ?? What is that?
And Mike, I think we all missed parts 4-11, including Nate.
October 31st, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Looks like I’m joining the class critique on the Meetic mark already in progress!
I’m not sure what language, outside of Marketing vernacular,
“Meetic” exactly comes from, but it’s definitely a strange word to brand your company with. “Stat-ic” / “Caust-ic” / “Meet-ic” – not the suffix that makes a word very graceful on the tongue…
Just to play designer’s advocate in the discussion and probe our critiques, I’d like to hear more about the meeting of the “e” forms and what it is that bugs us about it…
Awkward forms? An image that’s forced by those tails? What…?
Mike, thanks for putting the gauntlet that Nate tossed out there again in terms of posting my way through Typography – Round 1 – I’ll have to think about it and determine how best I could include that in my course planning. I’ve really appreciated the feedback, support, and criticism that I’ve received in past posts on educational moments, and it’s great to gain the insights of several student & faculty experiences in order to better craft a class experience. Stay tuned – Semester 1 ends in just about 6-7 more weeks and I’ll have better think time to determine if this is a climbable hill / goal at that point!
On the teaching topic, I have to say that it’s been completely mind-warping to look at semester calendars from the course planning standpoint. The semesters have felt SO much shorter as a professor than they ever felt as a student, and even more so once midsemester rolls by!
November 1st, 2006 at 7:37 am
terrible name, and yes the treatment seems like it was straight out of a typography class, even in the exectution. looks as though there was no fine tuning.
November 1st, 2006 at 9:31 am
Like most of you, my main beef is with the name itself. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. In fact, saying that name makes me feel like my nose is stuffed.
The graphic solution is simple, and that’s fine, ‘cuz not everything has to be mindblowing.
November 1st, 2006 at 12:06 pm
I agree with the premise that is nice to see a type-driven solution, but also agree with other posters that the execution is very week. Even a different font could have helped. And why is the second “e” green? it would have been “better” perhapds to have both “e”s green. (or another color entirely, but that is a different discussion).
The name is horrible, BTW.
November 1st, 2006 at 7:42 pm
I agree it looks like a beginning type class project. I don’t think it looks like a professional logotype however. I think it would have made more sense to simply turn the second e which would have made sense of the name “Meetic,” two letters facing each other. If the heart was really necessary it would have worked better as a shape behind the logotype, thereby implying a two step process of meeting with the possibility of romance in the background.
Yeah, the name is awful but all this criticism has probably killed whatever enthusiasm the designer had for teaching a type class. My advice is show it to the students, have them do something similar, then read them all these comments. They’ll come away with a good sense of what the profession is like.
November 2nd, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Meetic … Does anyone else read the negative space as two eyes above a grinning mouth with a tiny tongue protruding? Its green so I thought of a green frog … the embracing couple brought me to that logical conclusion. But everyone is sure it is not about kissing a frog? Go outside and say “meetic, meetic, meetic …” then listen closely. I could be right!
November 2nd, 2006 at 8:58 pm
George – I’m curious if your comment about dowsing the designers enthusiasm meant the designer of the Meetic logotype or myself, the designer / educator who’s slated to teach Typography in the Spring semester…
If it was concern about my mental welfare related to the class, I’m happy to report my enthusiasm for the subject is unabated by the continuing Meetic critique!
I think your suggestion to clue my students into this discussion is a great one – I often suspect they think that class critiques aren’t necessarily true representations of the way that working designers discuss what they do. It’s great to have this sort of chat “in my back pocket” to point them towards.
It could be an especially good tool to say, “See – your design actually got off pretty easy in that last class discussion! Just say a quiet ‘thanks’ that you didn’t get the Meetic contract!”
I have to admit that the longer I’ve examined this logotype, the more my skin crawls at the blatant disregard for any sense of kerning the designer showed in setting the text. Something that, more than anything else, really speaks to the kind of typographic laziness digital typesetting has certainly enabled to spread widely. One more goal to put into my course objectives, it seems…
November 4th, 2006 at 11:38 am
p.brickbigler asks, “Just to play designer’s advocate in the discussion and probe our critiques, I’d like to hear more about the meeting of the “e‚Äù forms and what it is that bugs us about it‚Ķ
Here is what I think but I may not be rghit in what I am sharing: Since we seem to read the upper part of the letters that form words … you can cover the lower third of most words and still read the words … the descending forms of the two “e” letters pull the eye down interrupting the normal progression of how we fixate as we scan a line of letters/words. We seek to identify what has kept us from a “comfortable” journey across the line of letters/words.
Thin legs on an elephant mess with the Gestalt! The skinniest and thus weakest part of the letter does not seem to support the bulbous part of the letters above. Rather, the descending shapes “drip‚Äù below the neutral letters. I believe that has as much to do with “what it is that bugs us‚Äù as the space between the letters. While kerning presents to the sensitive eye a more refined image and appeals to the Aesthetic, it does not do much to alter the reading of the text; if this is true:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
• http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/
The above might be an interesting read for students and their reaction worth sharing. Visiting the site will provide more information and additional explanations for what is going on as we read.
November 4th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Meetic … Romantic
November 4th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
I made the enthusiasm comment because I’ve found, and explained over and over to students, that it’s easier to criticize something than praise it. This seems to happen all to frequently on the web sometimes to the detriment of dialogue. And I’ve had to quell the anxieties of first time teachers of typography many times. Glad to hear you’re still excited about doing it. That’s the most important quality in getting a subject across to students, your enthusiasm. The second most impotant quality is being able to laugh when you screw up in front of the class.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Hi,
An interesting site that deals with type and even has assignments for collage students is the one produced by Cooper Union in NYC.
You might get some ideas or at least have another resource to share with your students.
Go to:
http://www.designingwithtype.com/cooperunion.html
Dave