What Business Is It of Yours?

I'm a little surprised by what has become a routine outcry among my friends in the design community. It's like every time a company comes out with a redesigned logo, they have to do it gingerly, carefully, calculatedly and nearly scared, knowing that a huge storm of criticism is about to be unleashed. Starbucks' CEO has to release a minute and a half video explaining the evolution of its iconic "siren" logo? Of course it didn't change the fact that designers the world over are up in arms. And I don't doubt for a second that Starbucks knew it was coming and welcome it. "This buzz is going to be great for us," someone said in Seattle.

Did The Gap suffer slumping sales after the online backlash that compelled them to drop their logo change? Did the people making all the noise even shop at The Gap? Gap showed extreme spinelessness during that uproar. I hope Starbucks doesn't yield.

If I had a company, I would change the logo overnight, without fanfare and without pandering. Not so much as a press release. Just send the sign crews out and get it done on the storefronts and swap out the in-store stuff as the old stuff runs out. Without focus-grouping and without crowd-sourcing. Starbucks is Starbucks. Your average Starbucks consumer might someday look at the cup and go, "Hmmm - they changed the cup a little," and then never give it a second thought.

(Click for bigger)

But we live in Insta-World^TM, in this consumer-driven, conversation-intense environment where the slightest misstep, or perceived misstep, is amplified and bounced around the world in seconds, where everyone's an expert and a company is nearly paralyzed with fear to make any move. And if they get criticized, they must hurry to the defense and engage a team of brand reputation management specialists to reply to negative tweets or blog posts or Facebook updates. Hurry! Scrub the wires for any negative mention that might hurt us.

You know what, big brands? They're just a bunch of noisemakers trying to make noise. For every whining baby out there making a stink about your products or service, there are likely a thousand loyal and satisfied customers you will never hear from. You go ahead and do what you can to alleviate legitimate gripes and resolve obvious issues. That's just smart business and wise customer service. Businesses were doing that long before social media came into relevance.

Brand loyalty is a wonderful thing. I'm not a Starbucks guy, but I know plenty of people in love with the stuff. They're not going anywhere. But if they want to chime in and tell you what to have as your company icon? That's when you tell them they might be happier with a cup of coffee from 7-Eleven.

Logo Creative Review

More messing around with the fun art of North Korean propaganda.

In this installment, the client plays the role he plays best, Supreme Dictator and Arbiter of All Things Creative. (click)

The Convenience Store of Logos

I have long been of the opinion that many in our industry milk the hell out of their projects. We like to "ideate" and conceptualize. We like to sketch and brainstorm and talk. We like to strategize and pontificate. Then we actually pick up our tools and either write or design, and many of us do this with a thoroughness that is not only unnecessary, but ridiculous. A recent colleague, a client-side team leader who came from a big agency background, was a master of making mountains out of molehills. One of our tasks was to create a new logo for his organization. This took no less than 18 months. There were votes, meetings, double-elimination logo tournaments, logo jousting, and finally, a 3-way logo death-match, in which the employees (about 600) got to vote in a secret ballot on the winner. Their votes in, the guy mentioned above went against their wishes and fixed the vote. He told them that his favorite logo was the one they picked. It wasn't. Needless to say, I've never worked with a bigger (or fatter) douche in my life. And you know who you are, big CMO down in Miami who sucks ass. (He didn't like me either.)

Anyway, all that to introduce you once again to Dana Severson, who brought us all some laughs at the expense of bad real estate ads. Dana, along with some partners, has a new idea. He's going to create one logo a day for 365 days. That's more logos than some designers will make in a lifetime. And he's booking clients over at idesignyourlogo.com. The first logo was done for $2. The next one cost $4. They go up $2 per day until February 28th of next year, when a logo will cost $730, which is still a supreme bargain if you've shopped around for logos.

I'm no designer, but I play a design critic here on my blog, and I'm seeing Dana is currently going through his "Fading Reflection" phase. That's what the people want these days, I guess.

Dana also writes a column for Fast Company.

It's a good idea, and it gets the guy's work out there. Best of all, he does it quickly and at a decent price. And it takes a certain amount of what-the-hell balls to just build up your portfolio right out in the open for all the world to see, day after day for a solid year. Sure beats the designers who keep a "Please check back later! This section of our site is currently undergoing redesign" message on their Portfolio pages.

I'm guessing redos and edits on these one-day logos will cost extra. Or at least I hope so.

Don't Get All Bent Outta Shape

A new logo for Indy.

Art Works

That's the mission that the new National Endowment for the Arts chairman chose. And now he wants a logo that "represents the three meanings of the phrase: the creations of artists, the effect of art on audiences and the contribution of artists to the economy." So, as usual, the client wants a logo that says way too much. To help get you started, I've created a sure contender in Microsoft Word.

But that might be a little too sophisticated. Maybe you can create some sort of figure that represents a sculptor, and the sculptor is making an appreciative audience. Out of money.

Proposals for the design must be submitted by e-mail to the endowment by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Feb. 26. Find all the guidelines at the Endowment's site. Winner gets a $25,000 grant.

The Meatball and the Worm

For the design freaks out there, there's an interesting piece today in The New York Times Style Magazine by Alice Rawsthorn about NASA's identity crisis.

Although after reading, I'm still not sure why NASA holds on to this hyper-dated logo, or "insignia" as they call it. They sought to modernize it in 1972 as part of the Federal Design Improvement Program, an initiative supported by President Nixon to modernize the use of design by government agencies. After spending a ton of your money coming up with an alternative that works, they brought this thing back in the bad years of NASA (crashes) to remind people of the glory years. It just reminds me of bad design.

Stop It, Already

See here? You can do the shiny logo reflection in MS Word now. That means it's way played. So you can stop doing it on all of your logo designs and websites. Please.

MapQuest: Too Little, Too Late

It's a shame what happened to MapQuest. At one time, way long ago in the days when we didn't have Google Street Views and Google Look at My Backyard Views and Google Stare Into My Bedroom Window Views, MapQuest was the go-to source for driving directions. They had it so good, even their name became a verb: We'd say "MapQuest it," and "Yeah, we MapQuested it."

Now where are they? Sucking the fumes of Google Maps. And what do they do about it? A few months back they got rid of their hideous '90s beveled logo. Now they've added a shiny Web 2.0 reflection to their Jetsons Font about two years too late.

Here's the old, old one:Here's the new old one:And here's the newest one:
Yeah, that should fix things, MapQuest. Now you're relevant again. We will forget that visiting your cumbersome site is an exercise in frustration and an example of retro-usability.

No. Wrong. Do Over.

You are not supposed to think of sun when you think of milk. It makes you think of warm, almost spoiled milk. Here in America, we like our milk cold, just like our beer. And your logo, Sunny Florida? Seriously? I can't count the levels of wrong this thing is. But you've been around since 1911, so what the hell do I know?

Candidate Logo Comparison

Austere. Serious. We're at war and there is one thing you need to understand: I've been in a war. McCain's logo is all about reminding you of his military service, starting with Navy blue and gold. From there, however, he reminds you of what was wrong with his military career. In an almost sad reminder to himself that he never achieved the rank of admiral like his father and grandfather before him, he awards himself that star. Then, he adorns the star with what could be considered wings, reminding us that he was a pilot, a pilot who graduated fifth to last in his class at Annapolis, not usually a place from which the Navy selects its flight school candidates. Unless your dad and grandpa are admirals.Obama's logo wants you to dream of a new land, an Oz-like landscape where farms produce patriotic foods and the dawn breaks like a sunny-side-up egg on the horizon. Obama's logo is a healthy breakfast of eggs and bacon. It is also doubles as an "O". He wisely uses red, white and blue, letting you know that even though he doesn't wear a flag pin, he thinks the colors are cool. He borrows slightly from the Bank of America logo, turning the stripes of the flag into a farm field. Obama's logo could double as a logo for some organic food packaging, with only slight color modifications to pale greens and tans.

Thanks to Thom Dinsdale for pointing out in the comments the web addresses, which I deleted from Obama's logo in the original post. To McCain's credit, he gets the long-ago accepted standardization of eliminating "www" from his URL. It's pretty well understood these days that ".com" means we are to go online.

Take it to The Bridge

Art is so subjective, but every time I'm in the conference room and I see this logo on the speakerphone in the center of the table, it makes me cringe. I just find it lame. And on the phone itself, the logo is all beveled out to the extreme, making the effect even more "wife had an early copy of Photoshop and designed low-budget corporate logo for new start-up." But I guess it goes along with the name, which is pretty literal as well. We need something that says "Many communications." It's got that fake, "evil corporation" ring to it, like they use in comedy movies; GloboDyne, ChemTech or PlastiCorp.


Polycom, Inc.�(NASDAQ:PLCM) is the leading independent supplier of standards-based IP phones, and has over 600 patents either issued or pending approval and over 15 million lines of active code across its product portfolio. In addition to their leadership in IP phone technology, Polycom� hired someone with no skill at all to design their logo. Well, maybe in 1986 this was considered really "cutting edge." Polycom steadfastly refuses to upgrade its logo.

Errors in Logoing

I'm no graphic designer, and I know just enough Photoshop to communicate my ideas and piss off the real designers, but some things just strike me as odd. Like this logo.

Just as a hospital might not want to use, say, a skull and crossbones for their corporate identity, it's probably not a good idea for a financial institution to adopt circling sharks as their logo.

I'm sure these are meant to be sailboats, symbolizing the "freedom of financial independence" or some such lofty banking notion, but still...