The Dave Mark

I don't want to Art Direct, but...yes I do.

So the other day I came up with a logo for myself.

Using one symbol.

Flip it upside down, it's the same.

Turn it around backwards, it's sort of the same. But not really. Nevermind that.

Greater Than.

Up.

Down.

Less Than.

OK, enough trying to assign meaning to it. What I like is that it's my name spelled with no actual letters.


I present...the mark.

So, all you REAL Art Directors, Designers, Junior Designers, Associate Creative Directors and Production Artists, feel free to tell me where this falls short. I'm used to it. As I've always said, I know just enough Photoshop to completely frustrate a real designer.

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.

Google's Cutesy Logo Whimsy Extended to Subsidiaries

But they are apparently putting the junior designers on the project. Or the interns. Or some child. But art and design being entirely subjective, I fully expect someone to come along and say "I love it!" That's fine. I'll "agree to disagree" as long as you agree that your opinion is stupid.

Friday is Just Like Any Other Day Lately

Life on the dole is a curious existence. On the one hand, you desperately search for gainful employment, while on the other, you have time to do things you didn't have time for when you were driving one hour one-way to sit in a generic office building in a cube, pumping out copy for taskmasters more suited to pushing a broom in a warehouse than making strategic marketing decisions. (And even then, I'm not sure I would trust them to sweep correctly.) Here's some of what I've been up to.

Presented a series of logos to a Jacksonville-based company, which is funny, because I'm not a designer. They actually loved one and are already using it on their in-development, internal site. I didn't charge them, since they're friends. And yes, I impressed them with the much-maligned (and deservedly so) faded reflection feature. 

Went on a job interview down in Tampa. Met with the lead person, who said, "My team would like to sit with you and discuss some things." In walked 11 people, who proceeded to tell me about the company and pepper me with questions such as, "What superpower do you wish you had?" "What animal would you be?" and "Pirate or Ninja?" (I swear.)

Took delivery of a 50" Sanyo Plasma. (Long story, but it was a prize.) This thing is imposing. Our "old" TV is now in the bedroom, a 42" Sony Bravia. I am now Winston Smith from 1984, trying to escape the giant visages screaming at me about healthcare reform from every room.

Presented a very cool idea to my favorite grocery chain. It was received well and is now being passed up the ladder, where it will likely meet its death in committee. Currently it remains a secret, but if and when they adopt it, I will be its loudest and most constant promoter, to the point that you will say, "I wish he'd shut the hell up about that stupid f-ing grocery chain." I made the pitch in Powerpoint - and yes - I am ashamed of that.

Got an up-close, inside look into how homeowner's insurance works. Basically, you make a claim, based on the recommendation of a professional whose job it is to determine these things, and then you watch as the insurance company spends thousands of dollars to fight your claim. I understand the need on their part to guard against fraudulent claims, but when you approach a long-standing policy holder as someone trying to get one over on you, then you pretty much suck in the customer service area. Are you in good hands? Now there's a feel-good slogan that doesn't mean a damn thing. Fuck you, All-State.

Went to a home-brew party at the neighbors'. They're Americanized Brits, the husband being some sort of mad-scientist for a defense contractor. I think he makes lasers that shoot out of cats' eyes. He also makes a great beer, or three. I came up with about six names for his concoctions with accompanying label designs, which again is funny, because I'm not a designer. But to a physicist like my neighbor, if you're "in advertising," then you can do that thing with The Photoshop, right? And when a physicist tackles a hobby like home-brewing, the results are very impressive. I am pushing him to "Take it to the Next Level!"

Added actual ads to this site. Am I a sell out? Yes, but it doesn't pay off until you have actual traffic. 150 visitors a day is not going to fetch me any serious coin. Also added a "featured video" in the sidebar, which will rotate with stuff from my YouTube account when I get around to it.

I have been living like a European, riding my bike each day to the market and loading up an old child carrier / trailer I found on Craigslist with the day's groceries and the evening's dinner. So far, no stalks of celery or baguettes sticking up out of the bags in that grocery cliché seen in the movies. I'm even using those damned reusable canvas grocery bags. I justify this disgusting transformation in me as "exercise with a purpose." We need groceries and I need exercise. Ya know, two birds. I'm sure people think I'm being "green," when actually I'm just trying to get in shape for the Apocalypse.

It is estimated that as many as 75% of American homes have within them a guitar. Granted, that guitar may be stringless and in the attic, but it is still there. It is also estimated that as many as 80% of all American males have attempted at one time to learn to play the guitar*. I knew how not long ago, but life has a tendency to get in the way of such luxuries. Dusted off the dobro and greased the strings, trying to remember where to put my fingers to make it sing like it used to.

* Both estimates based on pure fantasy with no data to prove them.

I Don't Work for Trek Bicycles

I refuse to allow car dealers to make me advertise for them on the back of my car with a nameplate or license plate frame, and last night, I'm looking at my bicycle in the garage and I see branding every few inches.

There's the giant Trek logo on the down tube, the model number on the top tube, some sort of bragging about special aluminum on the seat tube and then the Trek emblem on the head tube. Besides the emblem on the front, which popped off with little effort, the rest of the markings are decals which are fairly impossible to remove, buried under a few millimeters of ClearKote. But Trek is not alone in advertising on my bike. Bontrager decides they need no less than seven logos on the seat and seat post, five per hand grip and multiple placements on the tires. Shimano naturally will not be left out and brands the shifters and the front and back derailleurs in multiple places. The local Trek dealer also placed a couple of super-adhesive, nearly impossible to remove stickers on the frame. After looking at this a while it started to piss me off.

I love my bike and have blogged about it fondly in the past. It's a low-end hard-tail but it's durable and has served me well over the few years I've owned it. But damnit, I'm not Lance Armstrong and these manufacturers aren't sponsoring me. I'm not a paid shill for Trek or any of the components Trek uses in the manufacture of their bikes. So I went about blackening-out or painting over every single logo today.

One family member has already dubbed it "the junkyard bike." I prefer to think of it as some sort of post-apocalyptic Road Warrior.

Now I guess I need to remove the swoosh from the shirt I wear when I ride.

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.

Spin Your Wheels

Sometimes, you just have to think of it as a job.


The client has a very cumbersome and limiting name. Trouble is, they've been known by this mouthful of a name since 1945. At first, I suggested a simple shortening of the current name, keeping the main element that people know them by. A change was necessary, I argued, but a drastic change would likely alienate a large portion of their base. (Sorry, I'm being vague by necessity.) We were asked to come up with some alternatives. We submitted many, as did a naming/branding company that was paid tens of thousands of dollars. Naturally, the client wanted to see logos and taglines. Same deal. At least a hundred logos. At least 300 tags for the various name possibilities. They kept saying, "Use this word in the tagline. Use this element in the logo. No, give me a synonym for that word. I want to see this in another color."

Last night they held a board meeting in which the final few names would be narrowed down to a winner. After eight months and countless man hours, they elected to shorten their old name.

A colossal waste of time, or just how it works as people justify their bloated salaries and unnecessary positions? Maybe the process was required to show them that they already have an established brand.

Now that a name has been finalized, I expect to be involved in at least 30 meetings where we will listen to a dozen groups of unqualified people assess logos and taglines as they toss around the word "branding" as if they knew what it meant. I'm so looking forward to this.

Do You Know This Brand?

If you live anywhere near where men of action drive big trucks and act mean when they're getting their energy drinks at 7-Eleven, you've seen this decal on the backs of those big trucks.

I'd been seeing it for some time and for the life of me couldn't find out what it stood for. I searched "deer head logo" and "antler decal" to no avail. Then on Sunday, I saw two of these on the windshield of a muddy Jeep, with the word BROWNING in giant white letters between the deer heads. Yes, someone is so devoted to Browning that they've plastered the name on their windshield. This is fan loyalty in the extreme and it's a trend any brand would pay big money for.

I haven't hunted deer in many years, not since my brother-in-law stuck me up in his tree-stand with a joint and a rifle at 5:30 on a freezing November morning in Missouri. After the joint, I really had no interest in looking for deer and was instead enthralled with the way the long brown grass was waving in the wind. I know a lot of hunters, I grew up around guns and I can shoot pretty straight, but I'm just not that into it. Many others are very into it and Browning has cultivated a cult of sorts with this deer head logo. They call it the "Buckmark."

Here's Brandy, showing off her Buckmark tattoo. She even put a "TM" next to the words "Country Girl." That is really sweet, and I'll bet Brandy is a really cool chick and makes killer venison jerky. I know she can down a few Busch Lights while swigging from a bottle of Jack and singing "Sweet Home Alabama" all summer long.

This is Tyler. He's got the Buckmark on his right bicep as well as his day-glo orange safety hunting cap. Tyler is not going to college and that's fine. College isn't for everybody. By the time he's 30, Tyler will have many stories of the big bucks he's bagged and he will never worry about doing a 9 to 5. He's the kind of guy who could pick up odd jobs around town and be perfectly happy so long as there's gas in the camoflauged ATV and a bottle of doe-in-heat urine in his vest pocket.

When Michael asked his girl to the prom, she outdid the Buckmark on his vest lapel and put one on her orange tarp dress. That is serious love, man.

Oh, sure, it's easy to make fun of hunters and gun owners and hillbillies, and those same people make fun of me when I get together with them. ("You're a writer? What do you write? Like, letters and such?") But this is a story about brand loyalty. These people love Browning. There are over 2,000 more examples of people showing their love for Browning right here. It's all a part of the "Show Us Your Buckmark" contest, the winner of which will win, what else, a Browning rifle.

Here's a comprehensive history of the brand's logo, a mark they've been using for 30 years.

How many companies can inspire this kind of devotion, that their fans would literally brand themselves with the brand's logo? I can't think of one. UPDATE: Anonymous points out in the comments that Harley-Davidson fans are just as devoted. Good call.

Did You Know? Stuttgart Means "Stud Farm"

And so, Porsche is due for a logo change, adding a literal meaning for all the mid-life dudes in crisis trying to rekindle their studliness.

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.

Dyslexic Seafood Dining Options

Let's eat at that place that has the fish skeleton in the logo!

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.

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?

Favicon Fail

Google's new one.

And here's an endless, boring discussion on it by people with nothing better to care about.

Later, Sooners

People hate gloating winners, so be warned.

In their defense, the deck was stacked. From the location of the game (Florida) to the biased media clearly in the tank for Tim Tebow, (God's second-favorite Son) the Oklahoma Sooners were up against a wall. How do you rewrite a history written before the earth was formed?

As the game was ending and the coach being doused with Gatorade (invented at the University of Florida, by the way) I carried on a tradition instituted by my brother-in-law, currently serving in Iraq. If the Gators win, you must jump in the pool, regardless of weather conditions. It was cold, but if Urban Meyer has to endure a Gatorade bath, taking a cold midnight dip is the least I can do. And... I support the troops.

One of my guilty pleasures is visiting the hometown newspaper sites of teams the Gators beat up on. I like to read the rants of angry fans calling for the coach's resignation, or arm-chair speculating on how they would've handled that 4th and goal situation, if only they were a college football coach and not a fat loser fan of the beaten team who may or may not have discontinued beating his wife. And they always dump on Tebow, because they are bitter Satanists. But we still pray for them; that they may someday see the Light.

From The Oklahoman comes this picture of pre-game Sooners fans, still happy and hopeful as they stand before the bowl game's logo, blissfully ignorant of what Providence had already decreed before they were even born. They are also oblivious to the fact that even the game's logo was Gator orange and blue. It was Destiny.

Clothes You Could Eat - Part II

Ahhh, Abercrombie, the status piece for the too hip to know any better; so hip they don't even need to wear the clothes in the ads or catalogs.

The A&F logo says only, "I shop at Abercrombie and I'm an Abercrombie billboard." I've created a better one. This one says "I'm toasty and warm in a Holiday Way." Buy one for the lady in your life. She'll say, "Thank you... freak."

More holiday food clothing brand rip-offs here

Colored Spectacles

I broke my Randolph Engineering sunglasses this morning, and that’s not a good thing. They were pretty nice, issued to the military since the early 80s. Solid, timelessly stylish and one of those icons known only to a relative few. Unless you've been around the military, you've likely not heard of them. Randolph doesn't advertise. They don't need to. They have a government contract that keeps them pretty happy. They’re like Ray Bans for people who don’t want to be seen sporting the Ray Ban logo. (Even if it is a timeless and fairly cool logo.)

I’ve never owned a pair of Ray Bans on principle, but I went to their barely functioning website (at least it hates Firefox) and was amused by this take on the whole “mirror image” thing every web designer has been over-employing for the last four years. Generally, the designer will flip the duplicated image vertically, draw back the opacity and then fade the reflection away at the bottom. At Ray Ban, they instead flip it horizontally and place it right under the original. Odd.

ANYWAY…Didn’t mean to diss you, Ray Ban. Send me a crate of every style and color of sunglasses you offer and I will wear a different pair every day and blog about them. I will surrender my blog to Ray Ban for as long as it takes me to wear all of your glasses, reviewing each pair and finally selecting the ones that I like. The leftover pairs will be given to homeless men on the streets of Orlando, along with Never Hide^® t-shirts. I’ll take their pictures and we can do some sort of crazy viral thing that makes Ray Ban look concerned for homeless people who need sunglasses.

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.

Seven Other Places

Here are seven other places on the Internet you could be right now.

1. Every Presidential campaign logo since 1960. (Page might take some time to load.)
2. It's an animated chimp movie, with jetpacks! (With Amtrak as a sponsor? Sure to suck.)
3. Huge in Brazil, ancient Canadian power trio Rush. Their fans down there even sing to the instrumentals.
4. Meatwater. (Thanks, Fish & Chimps.)
5. The Obama worship has officially gone too far.
6. Passionate-White-person-teaches-inner-city-youth-to-shine.
7. A cool design firm wants you to work for them. You'll have to move to Jordan.