Logo-A--Go-Go

This week the BBC revealed their new logo for the upcoming new season of Doctor Who.

Eh, I don't hate it. It's OK as logos go, I guess. It's a bit wide though. If I was designing it, I'd but the "Doctor" above the "Who." In my experience it's always better to have as square a logo as possible. It's easier to fit it on a page that way, and you can enlarge a square one more than a wide one.

Honestly I don't much care what the new logo looks like, as I'm done with the show. They can typeset it in Sanskrit for all I care.

Given what happened to the title character at the end of the 2017 Christmas Special, the BBC missed the most obvious design here...

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That...

Lately I've been seeing vehicles festooned with this logo tooling around town. From the name I'm assuming uCabbi is some kind of independent cab service that's a knockoff of Uber and Lyft. 

Whatever it is, it's always nice to see our old friend The Seinfeld Logo getting work!

Logo Go Go

Last week, one more sign of apocalyptic biblical prophecy came true as presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump named Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate.

If you'll recall, Pence is a horrible, horrible public official who last year signed a controversial anti-LGBT law, which cost the Hoosier state millions, if not billions of dollars in lost business and tourism. He also signed a terrifying anti-abortion bill, and even stated that science is wrong about the harmful effects of smoking (!). 

The Trump/Pence ticket is truly a match made in the deepest levels of Hell.

Last Friday, the Trump campaign unveiled a brand new logo celebrating the two besties and running mates.

The logo proved to be quite provocative, as if featured a large, proud, throbbing letter T penetrating a submissive and receptive letter P. The thrust of the logo was unmistakable, as it pounded its message home, over and over again, faster and faster until it exploded in a spray of patriotic ecstasy.

Immediately after the logo was posted, the internet sprang into action, doing what it does best— relentlessly mocking it.

Apparently the taunts and jeers were too much for the Donald. Words hurt, you know! Less than twenty four hours after the X-rated logo appeared, it was pulled and replaced by a plainer, more family-friendly one. 

Note that Pence is apparently still a bottom, er, I mean on the bottom, under his new best friend and running mate.

DC Does It Again!

This week DC Comics unveiled yet another new company logo, to be used on all their titles, as well as their various digital and social media platforms.

They just came up with a new logo four years ago, but that's an eternity in the world of graphic design these days, so I guess they thought they were past due for a company-wide rebranding.

According to DC Entertainment Senior Vice President of Marketing and Global Franchise Management Amit Desai (Jesus, how does he fit all that on the door of his office?), "DC is home to the greatest Super Heroes and Super-Villains, and the new logo has the character and strength to stand proudly alongside DC's iconic symbols. The launch of the new logo is the perfect tribute to DC's legacy, exciting future and most importantly, our fans."

Well, that was some impressive Marketspeak™ there, Amit. Meaningful without saying anything.

Anyway, here's the new DC logo.

Meh. I'm underwhelmed. It looks like they're attempting to capture the look of their logo from the 1970s, but didn't quite get there. It's much too plain, and looks like it was slapped together by the designer at a stop light on his way to the meeting at DC.

The insides of the letters are a bit odd as well. According to DC co-publisher Jim Lee, those odd little cuts are supposed to invoke Superman's S-shield, Batman's bat symbol, and Wonder Woman's emblem. If that's true, then it's a huge fail, as I don't see a single one of those things in this logo. 

My biggest complaint about it is the frail, weak circle that surrounds the letters. It looks completely out of place, considering how bold the type is.

There, DC. I fixed your new logo for you. The beefed-up circle echoes the weight of the type, and looks much more powerful and balanced. I still don't particularly like it, but this is better than it was.

As mediocre as the new logo is, it's nowhere near as bad as the previous one, that looks like an old sticker that's peeling off the letter C. 

I've heard this logo described as an "partially unwrapped toilet seat," and once you see that, there's no way to unsee it. Maybe that's why DC wanted to change it after only four years.

Here's the logo they started using in 2005, which always sort of reminded me of Dairy Queen.

As you can see, DC's logo featured the same general "Type In A Circle" design up until 2005, when they went completely off the rails.

By the way, the "DC" stands for "Detective Comics." So DC Comics actually means "Detective Comics Comics." It's one of those redundant terms like "ATM Machine."

This is the DC logo I grew up with. It was created by graphic design legend Milton Glaser (look him up, kids!) and was bold, distinctive and instantly recognizable. It's the one I much prefer, and I wish they'd go back to it. 

You know what they say— "If it ain't broke, leave your goddamned logo alone!"

What's In A Logo?

Above is the new logo for the Evansville Museum, located, not surprisingly, in my home city of Evansville, Indiana.

It's actually not a bad logo. I like the way the stylized "E" and "M" interlock and form sort of a diamond shape. Well done, Mr. or Mrs. Logo Designer!

That said, I feel like I've seen this design somewhere before...

There it is! I knew it looked familiar. The Evansville Museum's logo is very similar to that of failed Texas energy company Enron.

Helpful tip to future logo designers: you might want to steer clear of designs that are callbacks the largest corporate debt scandal of the Twenty First Century...

DVD Doppelgängers: Seinfeld Vs. Blast From The Past

I was browsing Amazon today and noticed this.

Glad to see the Seinfeld logo's still getting work. He's settled down a bit since the early 1990s— he's a lot more balanced and grounded than he was in his wild & wacky younger days. He's a bit paler than he used to be too, but that's fine. Good for him!

If You See Something, Say Something!

This week popular bourgeois pizza restaurant Domino's launched brand new social program.

Domino's Leadership announce they design glorious new logo to honor Motherland. Unfortunately, certain capitalist dog franchise owners have not replaced old outdated logo. This is serious violation, as all Domino's must conform! Citizens urged to seek out franchises with old logo and report violation to Domino's Central Command.

Cossacks who refuse to update to new logo will be sent to gulag, while citizens who report them will receive free gift card, and chance to win free pizza for year.

Remember Comrades! It is your duty to report your non-conforming, running dog neighbors for the glory of the Motherland!

This Week In Ill-Advised Program Icons

So I'm watching The Flash on the CW last night, and I notice that whenever they run an in-house promo for one of their shows, they put these little icons in the corner of the screen.

They look like little squares with a letter inside, reminiscent of the Adobe icons on your computer.

For example, the icon for Arrow is a square with a stylized A, the cross section of which looks like a little bow. Clever, huh?

They use an S for Supernatural, a stylized J for Jane The Virgin, the number 100 for The 100, and then they mix it up a bit and use a lightning bolt for The Flash.

That's all well and good until we get to the icon for The Vampire Diaries. Yow... that... that's not good. That's not good at all. Those two letters should never be placed together, especially in a TV promo.

And the way the V is dripping. I know it's supposed to be blood, but with those two letters and the white color... it just looks like some sort of unpleasant discharge.

Hey, The CW. You use a lightning bolt in the icon for The Flash. How about for the Vampire diaries you use one with pointy teeth? Or a bat? Something, anything, besides VD.

That's A Lot Of Dollars

This week closeout giant Dollar Tree announced it's buying rival store Family Dollar for a cool $8.5 billion. Yeah, I said billion. Now that is a lot of dollars!

So what do you think they'll call this unholy merger between the two discount behemoths?

If we take a part from both names and combine them, we get Dollar Dollar. Hmm. That definitely tells you what the store's all about, but I'm thinking it's a bit too repetitive.

How about Dollar Family? Eh, I'm gonna say no. Somehow it sounds like an ill-fated Old West expedition that ended in cannibalism.

I know! How about Family Tree? It's catchy, it'll appeal to the Mormons and best of all it's got zing! Nailed it!

Pepsi X Rape!

This week soft drink giant Pepsi and Japanese clothing company A Bathing Ape teamed up to produce a line of co-branded products promoting... rape!

Yes, it's the fun new Pepsi X Rape advertising blitz!

What's that...? Hold on... Ah, I'm being told that it most definitely does not say Rape, but AAPE, the name of the clothing line. My mistake.

In my defense, you've got to admit that's a pretty unfortunate choice of font there. Look at it! Tell me that doesn't look like it says "rape" at first glance. Go on, tell me!

Yes, they used Pepsi's official corporate font, but at a glance that first "A" looks mighty like an "R."

Why didn't they just use the official Aape logo, seen here? It appears to be set in Typewriter Gothic or some other such font. Then they could have avoided all the laughing and the pointing and the mocking.

Pepsi X Rape isn't just available on a subway poster, tucked away underground! It's plastered on many different items. Why not flash your own special Pepsi X Rape smartphone cover every time you take a photo of your dinner at the Thai restaurant! 

You can even proudly wear your message of Pepsi X Rape emblazoned on your chest for the whole world to see!

Or jot down your innermost thoughts in your Pepsi X Rape journal! Live For Now With Pepsi X Rape!

As a graphic designer I honestly do not understand how something like this could happen. One person didn't design this campaign while locked away in a broom closet. There were hundreds of people involved. There were brainstorming sessions to come up with marketing plan, legal teams on both sides deciding who'd get top billing and demanding each logo be the same size, numerous meetings with merchandising vendors to decide what products would be used, and dozens upon dozens of executives who all needed to sign off on it before the whole mess got sent to the various printers. 

Every time I design something where I work it has to be approved by at least twenty people. Maybe even more. Between Pepsi and A Bathing Ape it would not surprise me if this had to pass through the hands of five hundred people. Are you telling me that not even a single one of them noticed something was amiss with their logo? 

I was going to suggest that maybe a disgruntled designer might have done this on purpose to get even with one or both of the companies, but even if that happened there would have been fifty people above him that should have caught it.

I'm looking forward to next summer's fun new Coke X TORTURE promotion!

Meh-Hoo

Forget about who's been cast in the movie version of Fifty Shades Of Grey. Never mind that the U.S. is about to start World War III. The biggest news story of the day is Yahoo finally unveiled their brand new logo!

Here it is, in all its purple tinted glory! TA-DAH! 

And an apathetic and half-hearted "meh" was indifferently uttered across the land. 

It's OK, I suppose. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, it's just sort of... blah. It's doesn't have any zing, any pep. Your logo needs pep if you want it to excite people. Pep's definitely the way to go.

Now their old logo, it had pep! Look at it! It's positively lousy with pep. It's got pep oozing from every purple pore. It's mischievous, with just a hint of sass! Why they felt the need to swap it out with this new vanilla flavored one, I have no idea.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had this to say about the new logo: 

We knew we wanted a logo that reflected Yahoo — whimsical, yet sophisticated. Modern and fresh, with a nod to our history. Having a human touch, personal. Proud.

Now that's some impressive MarketSpeak™ there! "Whimsical, yet sophisticated." Important, yet trivial. Exciting, yet mundane. Well-designed, yet thrown together at the last minute.

This new logo is the culmination of Yahoo's staged "30 Days Of Change" publicity stunt, which I blogged about last month. For thirty whole days they debuted an allegedly new logo design that they had no intention of ever using in a flailing effort to drum up interest.

Most of these "designs" looked for all the world like they forced some lowly intern to type the word "yahoo" in each of the thirty fonts they had installed on their computer. If they spent more than one minute on any of them I'd be greatly surprised.

Despite the fact that the new official logo looks like they did the same thing-- simply select a font and type "yahoo"-- they insist that it's been handcrafted. Yeah.... to paraphrase Bart Simpson, "I'm not calling them liars, but... I can't think of a way to finish that sentence." 

It looks suspiciously like the Optima font to me, with a few minor variations.

But sadly Mayer contacted me for my opinion, so I guess we're stuck with this banal and vapid thing for a few months. Or until they get another new CEO, whichever comes first.

Ya-Who?

Have you seen Yahoo's latest cry for help attention-getting stunt? 

It's called Thirty Days Of Change and each day for the next thirty days (hence the name) they'll design and post a brand new logo, culminating in the unveiling of the real new logo on day thirty. Or something like that.

And of course by "design a new logo" I mean "simply type the word 'yahoo' in each font they've got installed on their computer." Because that's exactly what they've done here.

Seriously, these are designs in the academic sense only. There's little or no thought put into any of them. It looks like they spent maybe thirty seconds apiece on the whole bunch.

Some of them are downright eye-searing. I wonder if they forced some poor intern make all these logos, or if this was one of those horrible contests where they get the public to submit a design-- for free, of course.

Out of all of them this is the only one that halfway looks like an actual design and has a modicum of style. I like it best out of all of them so far, which pretty much cinches that it won't be chosen as the final entry.

If you can possibly stand the suspense, come back on September 4th to see the disappointing, designed-by-committee atrocity they chose to represent their company!

Here On Johnathan's Isle!

Just one short year ago fast food restaurant Long John Silver's redesigned their logo, complete with awkward tag line (during their Aquaman phase).

Since they had the old logo for twelve long months, it was now hopelessly out of date and the time was ripe for a change. Behold their brand spanking new logo, designed by famed television producer Sherwood Schwartz. Schwarz used the same "wacky" font treatment and off-kilter arrangement that made his Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch logos such successes.

Schwartz, who died in 2011, designed the new logo from beyond the grave and transmitted it to Earth in the form of a brown water stain on a men's room ceiling tile in a Madison Avenue advertising agency.

Now With 50% More Attitude!

This week the Chuck E. Cheese chain unveiled a new version of their eponymous mascot:

As you can see, this redesigned and improved version of Chuck E. Cheese is totally rad and gnarly to the max! He's got attitude to spare!

This mascot features everything I loathe about modern advertising. The hipster clothing, the in-your-face cockiness, the rock-god power chord stance... it's a perfect storm of absolute awfulness. 

Do kids really like this sort of thing? Do they honestly respond to these X-treme types of characters? I can't imagine that they do. Few kids I know have the resources to take up skyboarding or rock climbing, and the majority of them lack the patience necessary to learn to play a musical instrument.

No, I strongly suspect that so many mascots are cast from this same mold because this is what a boardroom full of 50 year old marketing executives thinks is kewl.

To be honest the Chuck E. Cheese mascot has never been very appealing to me. It's never a good idea for a restaurant to associate itself with rodents, but it takes real chutzpah to adopt one as the face of your company.

Besides the obvious vermin connection there's something very off-putting about the way the Chuck E. Cheese mascot has always been drawn. Somehow their marketing team pulled off the difficult feat of making their own logo look off-model. Every version of their mascot they've used over the years looks wrong somehow, as if drawn by someone unfamiliar with the basics of character design.

At least the previous mascots looked somewhat like cartoon mice, even if they weren't rendered very well. The old one at the top here is probably the best and least objectionable. This one is just beginning his "X-treme" metamorphosis. 

The current one ramps things up a notch or twelve by turning his cap backwards (rad!), donning board shorts (gnarly!) and inexplicably adding a pair of driving gloves (perplexing!). His face and proportions also become more subtly human as well. He's also drawn in that hideous over-rendered pseudo 3D animation style that I hate so much.

The new and improved version goes way overboard with the realism. No longer is this a simple cartoon mouse. This version looks all too real. That is the face of an actual mouse. Those are real mouse ears. Every strand of hair is realistically rendered on his fuzzy little face. He's even gained a hairless little tail! This version is no longer in the realm of fantasy; this is an honest-to-goodness real mouse. A mouse wearing clothes for sure, but a real mouse nonetheless. Who wants to look at such a thing while they're eating pizza?

There's also something somewhat sinister about the new version. Maybe it's the eyes and the way they seem to be leering at something just out of camera range.

I have to assume this new version was designed by the same marketing team that gave us Poochie on The Simpsons many years back, in an episode that was eerily prophetic.

JC-PU

This week J.C. Penney announced they'd be making a number of changes to their stores, including of course, a brand new logo. Because these days, why keep the same logo for more than six months, amiright?

You might want to turn down the brightness on your monitor before looking directly at it.

Man, that's just not right. Are you kidding me? Penney's management willingly chose this logo to best represent their company? They weren't forced to pick it an gunpoint or anything?

Based on my own experience as a graphic designer, I can say with confidence that this logo will be extremely difficult to work with. You won't be able to shrink it much or the tiny text in the corner will become unreadable. But if you blow it up in order to see the text then you're saddled with an acre of dead space inside that red square. It would be hard to think of a more awkward design.

My first thought upon seeing it was, "When can I see the finished version?" I keep staring at that blank area, wondering what they'll fill it with.

As if the design wasn't bad enough, those colors are even worse. When you first fire up Illustrator or Photoshop and open the color palette, those are the colors you see. They didn't even bother to customize them or attempt to make them a bit more compatible.

I'm also not a fan of the current trend of "initializing" corporate names. Am I supposed to start calling them "JCP" from now on? Am I no longer allowed to say "Penney's?" Who can tell?

I may not like this new logo, but the head of Penney's, er, excuse me, JCP, is positively giddy about it. Listen to this hunk of MarketSpeak™ he spewed out in a press conference:

"The new jcpenney logo combines the elements that have made jcpenney an enduring American brand by evoking the nation's flag and jcpenney's commitment to treating customers Fair and Square. The square frame imagery will be evident throughout all of jcpenney's marketing, to remind customers to frame the things they love." 

Whew! He's probably exhausted after working that hard to say absolutely nothing!

This was their previous logo. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this one. It's Helvetica-ness wasn't very exciting, but at least it was identifiable and got the job done. I bet it was also a lot easier to incorporate into advertisements.

Personally I was always fond of this logo and wish they'd go back to it (fat chance, I know). It was quirky and had personality, unlike this current eyesore.

When will corporations learn that logos take a long time to seep into the public's consciousness? They're never going to recognize your logo if you keep changing it up every couple of years. There's a reason Coke has been using that "Coca-Cola" script logo for a hundred years.