Isn't that a paint? A whitewash, specifically.
Dan Hillman
Robert Crawford <craw...@iac.net> wrote:
>
> What is it with company's coming up with Freudian logos? My
>employer recently replaced the old, understated initial logo with one
>that features an elarged, open "O". The obscene jokes are already
>going around.
>
> And I'll never forget Caterpillar's "Up Your A'" logo...
My question, as a former print shop art-tart has always been: Why a logo
at all?
Logotypes are fine if they provide a simple means of identification. The
Shell and Apple logos, for example are damned good. They're simple,
reproduce easily, and actually have an association with the name of the
company they represent. Any three-year-old looking at them will say
"shell" or "apple," hopefully in response to the correct picture. This
is a good design. This, however, limits company names to tangible,
common objects.
Unfortunately, small business owners who come into print shops for their
business cards don't like simple names. Their business is often viewed as
an extension of themselves or an opportunity to puff and pretend. My
favourites were the scam artists--usually identified by a company name
ending in "Enterprises" or "International." These were the hustlers who
*always* wanted a globe as their logo, tried to sell me a water
purification system, and would usually default on payment for the job.
Lower on the evolutionary ladder, we have the logos that are nothing more
than the stylised name of the company, like IBM's lines through the
letters or NeXT's and Dell's rotated letters. Not as cool as Shell or
Apple, but at least the logo is a self-contained, self-explanatory unit.
This is where small business owners go bananas. I've spent countless
hours mousin' away, disfiguring some poor innocent letter that hadn't
done anything to harm anyone into a unique and dynamic logo, just because
a customer had some bizarre notion that a really cool intertwined J and R
would tow J&R Wrecker Service right into the Fortune 500.
JS Cleaning wanted their logo to be the J and S intertwined *and* made to
look like a vacuum cleaner. Sheesh. I mean, yeah, the end result kinda
looked like a vacuum cleaner, and one could, upon squinting, go along
with the idea that there were a J and an S lurking in there somewhere,
but why bother?
Finally, at the bottom of the logotype barrel, are logos that don't mean
anything by themselves and have to be explained. Perhaps the most common
examples are AT&T's Death Star or the beach ball of Continental Airlines.
There isn't anything even remotely AT&T- or Continental-like about these
sphere things, so they have to be helped along with an identification
label. It's sort of like the toolbar icons in Microsoft's Word 6 for
Macintosh. Hold the pointer over an icon for a second and a little yellow
note pops down to name the slowly-working function of that icon. This, in
the design world is known as Not Getting It.
It makes one want to weep. These people are so earnest and yet they fail
to grasp that nobody is going to see an elongated J with rays coming out
of it--"like it's Jesus, y'know"--and automatically think "Johnson & Son
Painting, Inc." I'm sorry and all, but it just ain't gonna happen.
Since those hellish days of yore, I can't help noticing the logos people
inflict on the world and wondering why they even bother. Logos and icons
are like a joke--if you have to explain it, it's not working.
--
Daniel Hillman
dca...@cus.cam.ac.uk
http://131.111.153.14/students/hillman/
Margaret Tarbet
>yet they fail to grasp that nobody is going to see an
>elongated J with rays coming out of it--"like it's Jesus,
>y'know"--and automatically think "Johnson & Son Painting,
>Inc." I'm sorry and all, but it just ain't gonna happen.
>Since those hellish days of yore, I can't help noticing
>the logos people inflict on the world and wondering why
>they even bother. Logos and icons are like a joke--if
>you have to explain it, it's not working.It
The problem isn't that logos are ineffectual in general,
but that they usually are designed and used in isolation.
I would make book that i could do up your "elongated J..."
logo and, with proper attention to the _whole_ company
image have "Johnson & Son Painting Inc." commercially
recognisable within their catchment area in a year's time.
You are quite right that someone coming into a printing
shop and getting a logo created for use on one-color
black business cards has little hope of it changing
their business life...but that's because they're
treating it fundamentally as a species of pools entry,
not because image and symbolisation are unimportant.
=margaret
--
....................................................................
Margaret Tarbet
net: tar...@swaa.com ; vox: +1-617-438-8647, fax: +1-617-438-4574
Software Art & Architecture Incorporated
Postbox 390 209, Cambridge Massachusetts 02139 USA
Comprehensive, Experienced, and Creative Consultancy
in Product Marketability/Usability Engineering
Local or Long Distance. We Guarantee Satisfaction!
.....................................................................
"No use crying over spilt milk, it only makes it salty for the cat."
-Anon.
Steve Masticola
>Finally, at the bottom of the logotype barrel, are logos that don't mean
>anything by themselves and have to be explained. Perhaps the most common
>examples are AT&T's Death Star...
But so fitting for an evil empire, no?
BTW, if you liked the Death Star, you'll love the new one for the AT&T
spawn, Let Us Consider Everyone Now Temporary Technologies:
A circle.
Red.
Drawn by a three-year-old who hasn't put enough paint on the brush.
(You can see it at http://www.att.com/lucent. If you really want to.)
With the money they spent on that logo, Lucent could probably have
saved a few hundred jobs. Or paid Bob Allen's helicopter bills for a
weekend.
- Steve "Of course, you could interpret it as a zero..."
mast...@scr.siemens.com.
Dan Hillman
>
>The problem isn't that logos are ineffectual in general,
>but that they usually are designed and used in isolation.
>I would make book that i could do up your "elongated J..."
>logo and, with proper attention to the _whole_ company
>image have "Johnson & Son Painting Inc." commercially
>recognisable within their catchment area in a year's time.
I don't disagree. Image and symbolism are important, but advertising
shouldn't be used -- much less *have* to be used -- to compensate for
bad design. Given enough advertising, target audiences can be made to
associate any fool thing with an ineffective logo. In the minds of
millions, an upper-case, rounded, yellow M means McDonalds. That's not a
natural or even obvious association: McDonalds doesn't sell anything
that look like the famed golden arches, but thanks to a lot of
advertising, folks have been "educated" to make the connection.
This extra effort required to get Joe and Josephine Sixpack to associate
a logo -- particularly one designed so poorly it requires a label --
with a company *and* its product requires a corresponding increase in
advertising bandwidth. This, to use the vernacular of my youth, gets in
my face. I maintain that advertising is intrusive and annoying and that
it's a Good Idea to keep it to a minimum.
An effective company logo must be even more specific than an icon. An
icon of a gasoline pump, for example, works pretty well for highway
signs, but it would be a poor logo for a company name. It conveys the
*idea* of fuel: gas, petrol, fuel, pump, unleaded, leaded, etc., but it
fails to do it with a single, unmistakable, name-of-the-company word.
Let's look at some oil company logos, the company they represent, and
their meaning:
LOGO COMPANY MEANING
Dinosaur Sinclair Gas Station
Star Texaco Gas Station
Shell Shell Gas Station
Admittedly, even a logo of a shell doesn't convey "gas station." The
shell logo, however, does convey the name of the company, even to a
naive user. That's a lot more than can be said for a star or a dinosaur.
If a logo is poorly designed, people simply aren't going to make an
association between LOGO and COMPANY unless they're trained. This is, no
doubt, the rationale behind such advertising inanities as "You can trust
the man with the Texaco star." One phrase down and we *still* don't know
what Texaco is. And it's presumptuous for Texaco to assume we care.
Advertising is an uphill battle waged entirely against noncombatants.
It's worse, actually. I've heard good moral reasons for the nuking of
Hiroshima, but I have never heard justification for bombarding the
public with ads. Particularly endless ads cajoling one to "Look for the
elongated J with rays coming out of it like Jeeeeeesus for all your
painting needs. That's Johnson & Son Painting!"
But I digress.
I propose that instead of companies throwing money away to adopt
ineffective logos and bludgeon innocents to learn what they're supposed
to mean, logos should be avoided.
But what about name recognition? That's an entirely different matter. If
"Johnson & Son Painting" as an entity isn't interesting to the general
public, a logo ain't gonna help. Call it "Wonderful Walls" or "Bitchin'
Brushes" or something unique. Not only could they have more fun with
their advertising, but they'd achieve the same name recognition with
much less bandwidth.
Admittedly, sometimes folks just want an excuse to take up advertising
bandwidth, usually for their own nefarious purposes. I've thought about
it myself.
"Once upon a time, when I was in high school" he wrote, indicating that
he was going to conclude with a digression the comp.human-factors folks
would probably not care about, "I was driving around with a friend."
We must have been in Rhode Island or Massachusetts or one of those
places. Whatever. Anyhow, we stopped at this little mom 'n' pop store to
stock up on Ho-Hos, Chocodiles, and well, basically any off-brand food
with a stupid name we could eat in the car.
My friend pointed to the shelves of drinks with a perplexed look on his
face. "Blue Bird cola? Why not just call it Blue *Penis* and get it over
with? Who in their right mind is going to buy this?"
Judging by the dust on the can, probably no one. But they had a logo.
Later, we discussed the possible motivations behind such a stupid name.
We concluded that Blue Bird must either be a pathetic family business or
some form of tax write off. The latter seemed like a terribly sensible
idea to us, so we came up with a plan: When we made enough money to be
able to decide between having our income taken away by taxes or writing
it off on a losing investment, we'd snub our noses at the tax folks and
go for one intentional, long-term, losing, yet entertaining investment.
We'd buy controlling interest in some bad-tasting off-brand cola,
repackage it with a rude name, and spend a lot on advertising designed
to offend people just for the laughs. Our name? Blue Penis, of course.
Consider the advertising potential:
[A cozy room decorated with boughs of holly, red ribbons, snow outside
the windows, the whole deal. Near the crackling fireplace is a small
table with a plate. On the plate are some cookie crumbs. Next to the
plate is an empty can of Blue Penis cola. In the corner, the top of a
Christmas tree is barely discernible amongst a vast heap of gaily-
wrapped presents.] Caption: "This year, Santa's got a Blue Penis."
[A B&D dungeon. A sneering leather boy is slapping a cat-o-nine tails
into his hand. In the background, a naked man is shackled to the wall.]
Caption: "All my men drink Blue Penis. Or they drink nothing at all."
But wait, there's more! Imagine the voice-overs, just *waiting* to be
snapped up by the cliche-hungry masses:
- Make mine a Blue Penis.
- Blue Penis. For Him.
- You can have my Blue Penis when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.
And, of course, we'd have socially-conscious ads promoting the
responsible consumption of alcohol and designated drivers: [Two guys in
a bar. One reaches for a beer, but his arm is restrained by another
guy.] Caption: "If you must drink, drink my Blue Penis."
And the beauty of it was that Blue Penis *wouldn't* have a logo. No
gigantic blue phallus behind the receptionist's desk at corporate
headquarters. No debates as to whether the logo should be circumcised or
uncut, flaccid or erect, large or small. No pesky graphic to ruin the
beauty of the display ads. No obscenity charges from states with
abnormally-high church attendance and incest rates. Like violence in old
horror films, Darth Vader before you knew what was under the helmet, and
the crusaders' image of God in *The Song of Roland*, the idea of the
Blue Penis would remain abstract, imagined by each person in the way
they interpreted it best. Folks would gobble it up, so to speak.
Preposterous, you claim? A horrible, offensive name? Don't be so sure. I
know plenty of people who've had a penis in their mouth, but no one
who's ever eaten a bird's eye. Yet that doesn't seem to stop people from
purchasing a well-known brand of frozen vegetables.
Steve Portigal
would be humanities.design.misc
--
| steve portigal
G V O | user interface dude
| culturally aware interface design