IDblog: More logo fun?

More logo fun?

First of all, let me say that I've long held that it is far easier to critique than create. I know...duh. But hey, isn't that part of user experience? Knowing that the great unwashed may not even remotely appreciate the stuff the masters create?

Digital Web Magazine logo This is just a prequel to point out that the folks at Digital Web Magazine are feeling a bit of heat as a result of their recent change in logo.

I think it's fab that DWM provided this case study in logo design. It's a useful glimpse into the process, and they deserve lots of credit for making themselves a bit of a target by going public. But I wonder if this where they might have zigged when they should have zagged:

The concepts we picked along the way were strongly influenced by the personal flavor and suggestions of the reviewers and my style of design.

Interesting comment. Doesn't this suggest that you might wind up with a logo that is the equivalent of the company org chart on the home page? The folks who paid for it like it, but what about everyone else?

And to comment on a comment from the WebWord discussion, I didn't see the arrow in FedEx until Jared Spool pointed it out in a session he did at an STC conference years back. My recollection is that he said they spent just about 7 figures to get that white space the way they wanted it. (And then I recall he commented about the fact that the arrow points the wrong way--backwards--half the time :).

Design Matters logo I probably shouldn't be the one to point out problems with logos. The logo/nameplate I've used for the ID SIG's newsletter, Design Matters, is one of those goofy "well, the red exclamation-like thing is like an idea, and the black circle is the team that hatches it" or something like that. The logo was designed by a CMU grad student, who it turns out was more text-based than graphic-based. The logo was designed in Quark, so I wound up re-doing half of it in Illustrator and the other half in Photoshop so I could give my printer the separations.

So that makes me just like the DWM folks...'cause I actually like our little nameplate. Tho I'm not too attached to it...I've offered to let folks redesign the sucker over the years, and haven't had a taker (what am I saying...we're nearly all tech writers...who would take on this task :).

Is it me, or is this something that is *really* well suited for focus groups? And isn't this what other media (particularly the film and television industry) have been doing for decades? I wonder how many "real" people got to comment about Burger King's new bun before they switched?

09:18 PM | linkme | home

Comments

Beth, first I want to thank you for your comments. One think you have to understand is that the readership of WebWord is not the readership of Digital Web Magazine and never will be. The readership of WebWord are by no means "graphic designers" or even "web designers" ...in fact, I would say they are closer to Jakob Nielson than da Vinci. My second point is that the whole idea of a logo is to stand out from the crowd and to be uniquely recognized. We feel the new logo does that otherwise we would have simply made the logo just text Arial Bold or Helvetica Bold and called it a day. I am not trying to defend anything, just pointing out the facts most people are overlooking here; namely logo design 101.

-- Posted by Nick Finck on April 23, 2003 11:25 AM

Thanks for your response Nick! Here's my thinking. One, I'm not sure I agree that the readership of WebWord and Digital Web Magazine have no overlap. Might be convenient if true, but hell, I read both. Maybe I am an outlier?

Two, there's a lot of room between doing a logo that only appeals to the "make it so only the cool folks get it" crowd and doing something as text Arial Bold.

My point, which applied to both the above, is that I suspect that doing logo design is no different than doing any other kind of design. Who is it for? Given the comment in your published case study, your new logo was "strongly influenced by the personal flavor and suggestions of the reviewers and [the designer's] style of design."

Did the "reviewers" mean a representative sample of your magazine's audience? Or was it a handful of DWM staff? That was my only question...did a small group of folks extrapolate for the DWM readership? I bet you serious money that when companies like UPS or Burger King switched their logos, they did so only after they reviewed the new designs with scores of focus groups. Yes, you want something that will be uniquely recognized, but you sure don't want something that will have your audience finding fault that could have been caught!

All this said, I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to point out that it is absolutely true that some of this is just as likely to be more knee-jerk reaction to change than it is real problems. I remember Whitney Quesenbery making this point after this same kind of "why did they change? this sucks!" commentary appeared when Salon redesigned.

I've also been on the periphery when my organization changed logos. After spending seven figures with a high profile brand firm, we wound up going with a slight alteration of our existing logo done by our in-house design department. Go figure. And lots and lots of folks were critical of it.

I guess the real question is whether the design process was handled in a way that allows one to feel confident that any bitching and moaning is either knee-jerk reaction to change or the inability to please everyone all of the time. What you really want is to feel confident that the design is the best choice for the audience possible. Isn't it?

-- Posted by Beth on April 23, 2003 09:02 PM