Logo Mashup by Mario Vázquez Amaya

LOGO MASHUP

IMAGE word

PLAY

You already have seen before something of this kind. It’s a fun and powerful form of cultural criticism. There have been many successive waves of humorously manipulated corporate logos. Some are surprisingly clever, others embarrassingly crude. Anyone with a computer can try their hand with that. My pieces count among the pioneers in this field of branding spoofs. These subversive designs had a very humble and spontaneous development. They were originally intended to be just random faceplates adorning the cyberculture blog what I wrote between 2000 and 2012, aptly named “Different Thinker”. In fact I created my first real logo mashup way before, circa 2001. It was an absurd and naïve merging of Hewlett-Packard and Harry Potter. As I had extensive previous experience designing typefaces and logos for real brands, I enjoyed the challenge of parodying the originals in their utmost detail, reverse-engineering even their mistakes. A fine grasp on typography is that makes the pieces really work.

These logos have spread across the Web in 2008, becoming an impressive worldwide hit. This was unexpected, since some of the pieces were posted two years previous and nothing happened then. The series was discovered by another local blog with a bigger audience. Then, a staff member of that blog posted the link on NOTCOT.org. From there it went to Neatorama, UnderConsideration: Brand New, Laughing Squid and many other cool websites, from China to Sweden to Finland to Germany to Spain to Japan to Indonesia to Russia to the USA again and beyond. I chose mainly global brands, since the results reach an obviously greater number of people. Some logos were omitted here because they became simply too old; they referred to companies or products that no longer exist. On other authorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; series of parodied logos the wordplay is often very loose, opening a broad field for humorous experimentation. In fact, T-shirts with such altered logos are a solid tradition. Maybe the most popular of them is the Ford blue oval logo with the lettering changed into, well, everyone knows what. 19

A range of other intriguing approaches is feasible. With some few exceptions, I focused on contextual puns exploring similar names within a same given field, such as cars or cameras, or verbal puns exploring sound similarities. But other authors choose to juxtapose two entirely unrelated logos in order to uncover new meanings. Many substitute the brand name with another word stating something openly critical of the company. A mashup works better when it exposes some ironic relationship between the combined subjects. The relationship can be either based on a real connection or not. In this manner, a funny piece can lead to surprisingly serious insights about the role of – in this context – visual identity. As a final note, if you like this work please link to it and invite other people to see it here. Just don’t rip the logos off the book, as some sites did with my original blog postings in 2008. (Although, tellingly, nearly all of the rip-offs were on sites published by my own countrymen.) 29

“LOGO MASHUP” Concept, image manipulation, custom typography, graphic design, writing, publishing:

RAW & ROLL São Paulo, Brazil No part of this work can be reproduced without previous express written permission from the publisher. Before you ask, I state that all the enclosed artwork is legally protected by the right to parody.

Typeset in Linotype Univers

Thanks to nobody in particular, much less the companies alluded to in this work. Dedicated to all fellow culture jammers and cognitive dissidents.

RAW & ROLL WEBSITE marioamaya.com.br/blog MORE PICTURES 500px.com/marioamaya Contact rawandroll@gmail.com

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This electronic edition is subject to unannounced corrections and improvements at any time following public release. v0.92 2014路04路05