LOGO& DESIGN The GOOD&BAD of
Gabriela Serpa
LOGO& DESIGN The GOOD&BAD of
Gabriela Serpa
GOOD
DESIGN
It doesn’t require much thinking; for me, a visual message is effective when you don’t have to think about it, when it is so evident that you have no choice but to feed into what you are being told, and there is no way to misinterpret what the intention of the logo is.
In terms of good design, I’ve noticed that there is a general trend in what I find effective and visually pleasing. More often than not, that entails simplicity as an effective tool for communication. I like simple, smooth geometric shapes, and find pleasure in logos that depend on art as much as words to transmit a message. The Apple logo for example, seems to me like a very good example of a logo design. It is literal, in that it is a drawing of an apple, and it is self explanatory for the same reason. Yet, it is also smooth and uncomplicated to look at.
Apple Logo (2014) Rob Janoff
Heart & Stroke is a registered Canadian charity dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. In November 2016, NY-based Pentagram Partner Paula Scher signed anew identity for the brand, that consists in a drawn logo of a heart and a stroke in red. “The identity centers on a bold, modern logo that uses the simple icons of inter-
national symbols to create a friendly, accessible and democratic visual personality‌one of the challenged of the identity was fulfilling the official bilingualism requirements of the country. The symbol fully transcends language� (Pentagram Project Page). Using drawings instead of just a font fulfills the need for a bilingual message, and this logo is brilliant because in a world where things are increasingly globalized, it reminds us that a picture speaks a thousand words.
Heart and Stroke Foundation (2016) Paula Scher and Jeff Close for Pentagram
Target (2006) Rob Janoff
The same kind of simplicity and sleekness rings true of the Target logo, that is literally a target. Understanding is what dictates a good logo, and while most would overlook Target as a competitor for good logo design, there might very well be a sense of genius in the company’s image. It is effective, simple, easy to look at, and inevitable to recognize.
BAD
DESIGN
The moment I knew I would be focusing on logos was when I saw the gmail logo, and was astounded by the fact that I had never noticed how poorly designed it was. I was baffled to see that not only did the logo make use of three different fonts in one single world, along with four different colors, but that even after it’s remake a few years back, it still looks virtually the same as the first, badly designed version.
is the most disturbing part of this logo.
The M in the gmail logo is an envelope, and while that bothers many, it truly isn’t my biggest concern. The capital “G” is in Catull BQ Regular while the lowercase “ail” is in Myriad Pro SemiExt Regular, and perhaps the discrepancy in fonts, having the Serif and Sans Serif mix in a non fluid way,
Fox says the he had initially tried to make the Gmail logo in the same font as the Google logo, in Catull. But Catull has, as Fox calls it, a “very awkward” letter ‘a’, which explains why he kept the “G” in Catull and made the “ail” in a sans serif font, Myriad Pro. While this reasoning clar-
According to the Atlantic, former google designers Kevin Fox and Dennis Hwang were up late night the night before Gmail launched to design the logo; they designed it last minute. This explains a lot, considering that the logo in itself shows many signs of poor construction, what with the aforementioned aspects.
Gmail (2004) Kevin Fox and Dennis Hwang
Kumon Unknown Designer
Something crucial that I noticed about many of the logos I deemed inadequate was that in a lot of cases, they try to explicitly attach emotion to their brand, and that’s not an easy feat. The letter O in Kumon, a math training program for kids is a sad face. What kind of kid would willingly want to go to a place that advertises unhappy children? According to Kumon “The logo includes a face called “THE THINKING FACE,” our symbol,
which suggests that all those involved in Kumon, the students, the Instructors, Center Assistants and staff all continue to think and grow as individuals”, but if I’ve learned anything about design in the past four months, it’s that intention doesn’t matter as much as what the end product transmits (Kumon). This is terrible design, because despite having a good idea, the idea is not evident.
BAD DESIGN
GONE GOOD
Mastercard (1996)
Mastercard (2016) Michael Bierut for Pentagram
I’ve noticed that the approach to logo design that I find most aesthetically pleasing, that is the more minimalistic aesthetic, is a product of the modernity through which Sans Serif has established itself in our culture. The more that logos get revamped and redesigned, the less complicated they appear. Geometry now signals progressiveness, and simple shapes project a specific attitude that makes people want to look at them; in a world with so much visual clutter, it becomes therapeutic to look at things that don’t over contaminate our field of vision. Less is more.
I can also recognize that many logos that are now considered inadequate or ugly could have been more than okay in another time period. Design adapts itself to changing times.
Aquafina (1994)
Aquafina (2016) PepsiCo Design and Innovation
DESIGNING FOR A MESSAGE For my selection of good and bad designs, I focused on logos, because throughout my time in this class, I have noticed that while many think that fonts and typography are something simple, it is very easy to create things with problematic messages, aesthetic issues, and overall bad design. When looking through logos and collecting various samples of things that I considered to be both good and bad design, I realized that a common trend between logos that I found ill suited for their purpose and ugly was that they did not convey the messages either they intended to, or if they did, they did not convey messages that would appeal to an audience. I am very interested in advertising, as well as psychology and perhaps that is why I find logos fascinating; they can either be used as tools to interest people and lure them in, or they can serve as an impediment to the goal and purpose of the company.
Aside from Kumon, political logos often get the wrong idea, and end up being illdesigned because they attempt to inflict views on people, not to mention that they are unsuccessful in doing so!
There’s the logo for the 2016 presidential candidate, Jeb Bush. The logo is simply the word “Jeb!” and it received a lot of critique when it first came out by designers and politicians alike. David Carson says: “It’s what I would expect if Jed! Clampett were running for mayor of Beverly Hills. This logo suggests nothing new, exciting or progressive, nor serious or highly educated. Good ole boy comes to mind; also SALE TODAY, painted on the side of a building.” The font is de-
Apple Logo (2014) Rob Janoff
signed in Baskerville, but perhaps one of my main issues with it is that the exclamation point is in a larger font than the actual word. To me, this feels like I am being pressured into getting excited about something, and considering that this is a political campaign, maybe I am! This logo is boring, unconventional, and it imposes itself on the viewer, being in bold, and really giving you no choice but to see the big three letter word centered in it. It is anything but subtle advertising.
What do YOU think makes a good LOGO ?