Posts Tagged ‘London 2012’
Monday, December 31st, 2012
The world’s least favourite logo—but for how long?
Was 2012 the year that brand design failed? Certainly the general public and a large number of designers did a heck of a lot of complaining as a long list of high-profile new / reworked logos appeared to increasing derision — so much so that you have to wonder: is a logo launch free of moan-brand misery even possible in 2013?
One by one, ever more brands joined 2012’s year-long turkey shoot culminating in October with the University of California: a logical, reasonably well-executed new device incorporating references to the 150 year-old seal it replaced (see below, or here). Yet it inspired new heights of hostility, finally being withdrawn after widespread media taunting and a 50,000-person petition. Not a work of staggering genius perhaps (the applications did seem a bit dull) but deserving of that much crazed torch-bearing lynch-mobbery?
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Tags: brand design, communication, Ebay, Gap, logo design, London 2012, Twitter, University of California, Windows
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Friday, August 10th, 2012
Barely a month seems to pass without someone, somewhere taking a pop at brand design by highlighting the entertainingly high cost of some logos.
This week it is the online enterprise (no stranger to my spam folder) that offers low-grade generic ‘professional logos’ for hundreds, even tens of pounds / dollars. I will not dignify / promote the business by linking to or naming it here, but their pitch contrasts exceptionally fortunate startups paying little or nothing for their first logo (Twitter, Nike, Coca-Cola…) with large corporations (Accenture, Pepsi, BP, Enron, London 2012…) who coughed up six to nine-figure sums for the same thing (no sources quoted of course). So far, so unsurprising.
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Tags: brand design, branding, communication, design, graphic design, logos, London 2012
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Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
© not London 2012 – flagrant violation of 2012 brand parameters. So sue me.
There is plenty in the London 2012 Olympics for us to get angry about: The magical / mythical ticket chaos; sponsorship & brand fascism from Union Carbide to intimidation of cornershops; the rooftop missiles; the world’s least-engaging Olympic mascots Hemlock & Mandible – and no-one is without an opinion on that logo.
I remain alone in feeling that – whilst no thing of beauty – the 2012 logo did an effective job of what it set out to do: signal a fresh Olympic spirit to humans under 30 not engaged in sport. But the typeface is hideous, most applications of the identity weak (Otl Aicher it ain’t), and the enforcement zeal of Seb Coe’s brand police defies belief. My mother is helping to organize a sport-themed village flower-arranging competition this summer (‘The Blooming Olympics’) and I fully expect a LOCOG-ordered SWAT team ambush with helicopter gunships and a bloody showdown in the tea tent. (more…)
Tags: branding, communication, graphic design, inspiration, London 2012, sport, visual culture
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Monday, October 11th, 2010
The increasing power of brands has also seen the rise of the logo lynchmob, pitchforks and flaming torches aloft in pursuit of another artless arrangement of a few Helvetica characters. This now routine negativity reached a new pitch last week when Gap unveiled its new logo to a tsunami of online invective, much of it from designers. Healthy debates are overheating and professional dysfunction threatens to encourage design-by-mob.
The talking-up of graphic design into rocket science always invited public criticism, but once upon a time the industry avoided attacking itself in public. Somewhere late in the 20th century that began to change. When BP (pre-pinwheel identity) italicised it’s old shield-based logo, the Sun and other esteemed UK print media ran ‘NEW LOGO COST £40m’ and/or similarly misleading headlines (the agency will have been well-paid, but the vast majority of that sum will have been ongoing global implementation costs). A bruising PR fail in itself, but there in the news story text was one of the big branding figures of the time quoted as saying how terrible the logo was—helping to fuel a popular view of designers as overpaid charlatans.
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Tags: brand design, brand names, branding, communication, crowdsourcing, design, design criticism, design industry, Gap, graphic design, iTunes, logo, logo rage, London 2012, MySpace, new logo, Twitter, visual culture
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