Today, Seth talks about the 2012 Olympic logo story that we have all been following and draws some surprising conclusions. Seth is quoted below in bold with my responses below.

The art of picking a logo, even one for the Olympics, has almost nothing to do with taste or back story.
By that rational Seth should be praising the 2012 logo. The reality is that the 2012 logo fails for exactly those reasons: it is distastefully ugly, and it lacks any element that connects it to the event. Seth puts absolutely no importance on a logo being formally appropriate or contextually relevant. That is essentially what Seth is saying when he points to Nike, Starbucks, and Apple as examples of corporations that didn’t have to pay for their logos. To him these logos are just a random image picked by an uninformed employee. Yikes.

A great logo doesn’t mean anything until the brand makes it worth something. That’s why spending $800,000 for a logo is ridiculous.
A good logo connected to a strong company should always be the goal. The companies that are paying $800,000 for a logo are the companies that have millions of dollars riding on their identity and its ability to say the right thing. The companies that can benefit the most from a logo improvement would probably pay more than 100 to 500 times less than $800,000. Logo design should be handled by a professional and there are thousands of terrible examples showing how badly a company can look when they try to design their identity themselves.

Of course, the original Olympics logo meant nothing much when they started.
History proves Seth wrong on this point as a quick Google search would have saved him some embarrassment. Isn’t it common knowledge that each ring represents a different continent? If it were up to Seth the original Olympic comittee would just draw a random abstraction out of a hat.

The iPod didn’t need a logo, where a pair of sneakers or a cup of coffee do.
Apparently since the iPod is type only it doesn’t qualify as a logo in Seth’s world.

If you’re given the task of finding a logo for an organization, your first task should be to try to get someone else to do it.
Why? Because it isn’t worth your time? Because it is too hard and it is better to delegate the tough stuff. I would love some explanation on that statement.

If you fail at that, find an abstract image that is clean and simple and carries very little meaning–until your brand adds that meaning.
Wrong. Find someone who has committed their life to logo design. Pay them and trust that they know more about logos than you.

It’s not a popularity contest. Or a job for a committee. It’s not something where you should run it by a focus group.
Well, that’s true. It also isn’t something that you should do yourself if you don’t know what you are doing.

It’s just a placeholder, a label waiting to earn some meaning.
And if you think your brand’s identity is just a placeholder you will never get taken seriously. If Nike, Starbucks, or Apple treated their logo with such little respect nobody would have ever heard of these companies.

When I set out to create this post, I was thinking that we might be able to determine the outcome of the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war by the quality of their logos. I wanted to determine from recent history if the format with the better logo usually won. While I don’t really like the Blu-ray logo, I simply cannot stand the grafted unbalanced nature of the HD DVD logo. So my vote is for Blu-ray even though I have no real knowledge (or care) of either format. And with Apple’s support of Blu-ray, aren’t we always supposed to agree with their decisions?

With two other video format wars represented in the above logos, I would have to pick the DVD over the DIVX logo. And yes, I do know that DIVX wasn’t a completely different format, just a different setup for movie rental. When I found the Betamax logo and put it next to the VHS logo, I was surprised that I liked the Betamax logo just a little more. Although … I don’t think either is all that strong.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we could determine a corporate success on the quality of their logo?

The word mark itself is very simple and straight typography. Like it’s parent company this new voice is bold and straight forward. I could go on and on, but I will just reveal this new bench mark in identity design . . . errrr critique?

The logo of the hour is none other than Under Consideration’s just announced “Brand New”. A devision of Speak Up solely dedicated to identity and branding. As Armin puts it . . . “With new work being created consistently ‚Äì and Speak Up not being able, or willing, to accomodate every single new logo that comes out ‚Äì we wanted to offer a space that would showcase this work and allow the design community to stay plugged in to the ever-evolving saga of identity work.” From my perspective this is a smart move by Armin and company. While some of the intellectual elite in the design world (like Mr. Rudy Vanderlans) bash on blogs for just talking about the latest logo design, there is an obvious appetite by a great deal of designers to discuss new logos. We at BADG can attest to this, since many of our most popular posts have been logo discussions. It is also a huge part of what made Speak Up famous from the beginning. I have to admit that at times I wish we could get as excited and fired up about articles like Nate recently wrote. In the end, we all have opinions about the newest logo and we want to share. I see this as a way to feed both the need to make a design blog more than just a place for logo discussion and in turn giving the peeps what they want … late breaking logo … I mean Brand News.

SOOO … will there actually be brand discussion in this new blog, or is it misbranded? My guess is that the majority of it will be logo discussions and at best identity discussions. On his last Recent Rebrandings posts on Speak Up, David Weinberger took some heat from the likes of JonSel and Debbie Millman for calling something a brand review and then just posting logos and a snippet of a press release. I don’t want to diminish the work that this takes, because that is basically what I do with the Logo New(s) posts (and it takes a huge amount of work). I assume I have been spared the harsh critique of JonSel and Debbie, because I have not labeled mine under the giant umbrella of branding.

One other interesting differentiation from Speak Up, is the addition of graphics on the main page. While the consistency of the “no-image-on-home-page” look of Speak Up is nice, it would not have fit the immediate and gut reaction reviews of Brand New. I am also curious to know if the Brand New logo was derived from a font or if it is custom drawn, like the Speak Up logo.

While it will be interesting to see how far into branding the Speak Up crew will delve, I will definitely visit Brand New on a regular basis. I plan on continuing my Logo New(s) posts and I’m sure you will see me link to Brand New fairly often. I wish them the best and look forward to getting even more education in the world of identity and branding.

Here a few things that I have crossed my path. Recent logos, new packaging, imitation that is not flattery and a personal response to the new red Nano . . .

I know the new CW network has been out for a while, but I am enjoying the new logo and especially how they are using it. I find it ironic that everyone is using multimedia and television as a reason to make 3D and gradients logos, while this new CW logo proves that flat color can be just as (or more) effective and active. The design is by Trokia.

Does anyone else think that HP’s new campaign is WAAAY too close to the Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close cover designed by Jonathan Gray? Thanks to Chris Rugen for the tip.

I started to write a review of the new Cisco Systems logo, but then I checked to see what the very thorough and insightful Tony Spaeth had to say on his site, Indentity Works, and he had a great review of it up. This new design gives me hope for the future of identity design and branding. It improves upon a classic and successful mark. According to Tony, Joe Finocchiaro and Jerry Kuyper worked on the new design. Bravo!

WIth a very generous gesture from my brother, he gave me a new PRODUCT (RED) iPod Nano. I don’t know if I have ever held a product in my hand that felt so nice. Thank you Apple for bringing the colored aluminum back. It also great to know that people besides me will benefit from my brother’s generosity. Maybe next time Apple will donate $15 or $20 to help fight AIDS in Africa. I did find one thing a little peculiar. It looks like Apple has slightly changed the (PRODUCT) RED logo to match their new iPod color. The color change is slight, but when you are talking about branding and consistency it might have a bigger impact than expected.

On a personal side note … As I look at my new iPod, I can’t help but think that (PRODUCT) RED copied my logo for club(red), an AIGA graphic design book club. Anyone else see the similarity? I’m sure Bono has visited my portfolio site on several occasions. Well as much as I like modernism, the similarity between these two logos, gives good cause to add a little extra character to your next mark.

Brand Channel also did a review of Project Red and other corporations that are using “Cause-Related Consumerism”. There was no mention of Designism.

Getting the award for trendiest redesign of the year, Herbal Essences jumps on the ornamentation band wagon. I have to admit that the logo and the new packaging are attractive and do catch my eye as I walk past. It is also vastly better than the old logo. It will be interesting to see how this ages and how long they will keep it.

While I try to refrain from the “hey look at this horrible design I saw today” posts, I just can’t hold back the disappointment that I experienced when I witnessed this at my local grocery store. I enjoyed the previous packaging redesign of Clearly Canadian (here and here) and I think it even garnered a few design awards. The patterns were added a couple years later, but the essence of the redesign remained the same. While the new design was created to fit in with the bottled water crowd, the design is disappointing. It is too bad that the marketing and branding goal wasn’t accomplished with good design. Here is the press release

I (and many others) have been pretty harsh on the new gradient and transparent logos that have been released in the last couple years by the major branding firms. While I’m still not a big fan, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how these major brands (and the branding firms that represent them) are creating the end files. All of the logos I am looking at are in some way downloadable off the internet without a subscription. I pulled a few off of PDFs, but most of them are from an original logo file. While I am making some assumptions about how these files were created, please pipe up and let me know if you know better than I. I certainly have not created these types of logos on such a large scale. So. . . I’ll just jump right in. Warning: Some serious geekey, production details follow. If you don’t work on a computer or are not a designer, none of the following will make much sense.

So lets look at the at&t logo. One thing I found a little strange is that when I opened the at&t logo file, it opened in Illustator (it was saved as an .ai file) in RGB preview mode. This file does not have any native Illustrator or Freehand gradients. It appears that all of the gradients have been converted to stepped shapes. This would probably be the best way to create the file, so that the designer can control the banding (or lack of), instead of the output software. While there are different ways to convert a gradient to shapes within Illustrator, I couldn’t duplicate the way it was created by the “expand” option or by using the blend option. I have assumed from the beginning that this logo was originally created in a 3-D software program, and maybe this is further evidence of that. Please set me straight if you know.

The ups logo was taken from a downloaded PDF so this might not be the best representation of how the final logo file was produced, but it still sheds some light on how it was created. Like the at&t logo, the ups logo didn’t have any native Illustrator gradients, but they were created in a different way. All of the ups gradients were created as embedded graphics. All-in-all there were only four gradient graphics that were embedded. Other than the four main gradients, the rest of the 3-D look was created with various tinted shapes.

The DC Comics logo is the only one of all the reviewed logos that uses the native gradient in Illustrator. There are really only three major gradients in this logo, so maybe they won’t experience any banding problems when taken to press. I also assume that this file won’t be as widely distributed as the ups and at&t logos. On a nit-picky level, I am curious as to why there are hundreds of anchor points in part of the dark blue swoosh at the bottom and left side. The rest of the shapes are clean, but that portion has an unnecessary amount of points on the path. It is also interesting to see how the designer worked with some of the overlapping shapes.

The Dr Pepper logo gradients are embedded and masked in the file as well. They aren’t exactly traditional gradients, but bitmapped translations. This gradient effect (or dither in this case) reminds me of the “Dissolve” layer effect in Photoshop. By using this effect for the transition, there are no screened colors and banding to deal with. There was a total of 4 embedded graphics in the file. I assume when you are working with the high production and specified methods of the soft drink industry, there are a high level of requirements that need to be followed.

The Dr Pepper logo weighs in the heaviest of those here at 1.6 MB alone and 2.8 with the background. The Dr Pepper logo was saved as an .eps. One curious point of this logo is that there is still a little evidence of the original creator of the file. If you look at the embedded file information, it shows that “Ovalgradient.tif” was originally linked to Station 7, which is apparently Pamela’s computer (or maybe the file was accidentally linked from the designer’s Pamela Anderson pics folder on his desktop).

The Microsoft Dynamics logo file was actually saved as a PDF. I’m sure there are benefits to the PDF logo, but I rarely see large corporations offer their high-res logo files in anything other than .ai or .eps. I actually encountered a “unknown shading type” warning when I opened this file in Illustrator, but I can’t tell what the problem was. This had by far the most embedded files in it, topping out at over 50. Somehow the file size came in the lowest at 132 KB. Maybe the file size is the reason for saving the PDF. This logo was a complex mix of masked-off embedded graphics.

I tried to find a vector version of the full color Quark logo, but I was unable to locate one. I opened a Quark brand guidelines PDF in Illustrator, but the entire logo mark was an embedded graphic. My guess is that full-fledged Quark logo is always an embedded graphic and that there isn’t a vector version of the logo.

It was interesting to see the various ways that designers deal with transparencies and gradients in logos. Wether you think logos should always be made out of flat colors or not, it is still helpful to know how others produce their creations.

UPDATE! 9-9-06

Thanks to Armin, I now have an actual .ai file for the UPS logo. At least I was accurate in my statement that what I was looking at for the UPS logo “might not be the best representation of how the final logo file was produced.” Like Armin mentioned in the comments below, this UPS logo used a mix of Illustrator mesh gradients and traditional gradients to create the 3D effect. The actual “ups” letters were created with a radial gradient while the two large badge shapes were created with the mesh tool. Some of the bevels had a linear gradient in them and the others were created with solid color. It is hard to deny that it was created effectively for 4-color production.

On a side note: I thought the non-filled and converted-to-paths below 1″ text was interesting. Does anyone know what this means? Is this logo file not supposed to be used below 1 inch or is it only supposed to be used when it is at 1 inch or below? Or does that mean something completely different?

Here are a few screen captures.

Also includes handy office-redesign tips to maximize your creative energy. And pixels as big as hams.

It has been a huge week in logo redesigns and it looks like the next couple of weeks are going to be even bigger (and flashier)! First MasterCard and Payless, and now three Rand and one Bass logo. No word on which branding firms took these on, but from the look of the designs, the list is pretty short. Westinghouse gets swooshey, United gets transparent, IBM becomes ibm and ABC rounds it all out. Isn’t this your worst identity nightmare?

Ok, ok . . . These are not real! As far as I know, none of these logos are in the process of being redesigned either, but this would be my worst nightmare. I created each of the above redesigns in about 15-30 minutes of Illustrator and Photoshop “magic”. There is no real thought behind them . . . just swooshes, bevels, perspectives, gradients and transparencies. I did these as an attempt (albeit a weak one) to convince others to not mess with these logos, at least not in this way. So many great and timeless logos have been scrapped for the shiny new logos of today. So much could be done with the supporting visuals to enhance a brands identity, that many times there is no need to destroy the classics. Maybe the usual suspects (the few mega-branding firms who handle these types of rebrands) will see the above designs and scrap their first round of ideas, and push on to create some innovative identities and not the easy solutions that we have seen so much of lately.

The Current Logos

To quote a recent Speak Up editorial by Armin Vit . . . “that Payless’ new logo is not good. It’s bad. And worst of all: It’s not amateur-bad, it’s professional-bad. Just like AT&T, UPS, Aflac, NWA and many, many more.”

I know I am probably preaching to the choir here, but maybe, just maybe if we sing loud enough, the branding firms that make these decisions will hear our song of reason and make the right decision. If we are going to redesign a classic logo (or design a new one for that matter), lets stand up for good design and actually do something innovative instead of relying on bevels and drop shadows applied to someone else’s genius.

The Ducks that are no longer “Mighty” get a new logo from Frederick & Froberg Design Office. “We wanted to be more traditional in terms of the name, … In fact, it was a little too tied to the movie.” said Ducks owner Henry Samueli

From the Press Release: “The result is a strong, typographic mark anchored by a stylized “D‚Äù that echoes the image of a duck’s foot or footprint. The custom typography has a powerful forward momentum and is made up of metallic gold letters with orange drop-shadows and a black holding shape. The new uniforms are an evolution of the earlier sweater design but with gold, white and orange sweeping stripes influenced by the curves of the ‘D’ in the Ducks’ logo.”

The Milwaukee Bucks mix the new with the retro to create their new logo.

“With a nod to their early days and a look toward the future, the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night unveiled their new logo and color scheme.

Out goes the purple. In come three colors: a red that is far deeper than Bucky Badger red, the traditional forest green and silver.”

I reviewed Cooper Tires getting rid of Cooper Black in their logo, and it looks like Payless Shoes is following their lead. While the Payless identity was in need of some work, the results are a bit uninspired. Armin has an good review on the new logo over at Speak Up. Maybe someday I will learn to love Cooper Black as much as Armin.

From the Press Release:“The new logo, the first redesign of the Payless logo in about 20 years,
incorporates key design elements that leverage Payless’ rich heritage and communicates a “new and improved” Payless — a brand that is contemporary, fun, friendly and, above all, stylish”

MasterCard International becomes MasterCard Worldwide. I probably shouldn’t be this sarcastic, but can you count how many transparencies and gradients are included in this logo? Is it really that necessary?

From the Press Release: “The three circles of the new corporate logo build on the familiar interlocking red and yellow circles of the MasterCard consumer brand, and reflect the company’s unique, three-tiered business model as a franchisor, processor and advisor:”

This week, automotive machinery conglomorate The Autobots announced a new logo and marketing direction for its company.

Analysts had worried for years that the company’s logo was becoming “dated” and “wicked 80’s.” The new look, spearheaded by Autobot President and CEO Optimus Prime, is meant to bring the company’s image up to date and refresh its brand appearance, a spokesperson said.

“We feel like this new company image, which is more of an update, per se, is exactly the right move for our company at this time,” said Prime. “We’re a little bit angrier now. Can‚Ķ can you see the eyes? We’re angrier. And we have a bigger nose. Our design department has assured me that bigger noses are in with our demographic.”

The new design sharpens the brows and reduces the negative space between each element of the logo, creating a tighter, more aggressive image. “Yeah man, we totally needed to ditch that whole pacifist vibe,” said Autobot PR Manager Jazz. “Look, see, it’s all like‚Ķ ‘grrrr’‚Ķ right? That’s our company in a nutshell, poser.” The new design also removes the original airbrush gradient of blue and red, and moves into a more weathered metal texture.

“Look, this company’s been around the block,” said Prime. “I’ve seen this company go from a top market position on Cybertron to stuck in the middle of a volcano for, how long? Four million years. Now we’re trying to adjust our image to suit our company’s rich history.

Competitor company The Decepticons, which has shifted its focus to the field of aeronautics, remained unimpressed. When reached via telephone, Decepticon CEO Megatron replied “You call that angry? We’re not impressed. My nephew’s friend is designing our new logo right now. We don’t even have to pay him.” Megatron added that you could expect to see the new Decepticon logo by summer of next year.

Lipencott Mercer designs the identity for Alltel spinoff Windstream. Clean and trendy for sure. I think this one would fit right in with the Logos of Web 2.0.

The Miami Dolphins put a new brand on their stadium. Same colors but a more streamlined/cool look.

TLC gets a rebranding and a new “Life Lessons” campaign. They round the corners and make the logo shine. I think it looks better without the gel.

If a T could go globe trotting, would it look like a swoosh?

A few notables . . .

For some reason professors want to put the Kansas Jayhawk on their business cards, instead of the more academic and serious logo, proving that nostalgia is a powerful force when dealing with change. Here and Here

More design from Method.

A designer defends his own new logo. Via Logo Lounge.

Indiana Rebrands.

Of course, some major rebrands.