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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: April 05, 2003 The process of redesigning a logo -- "Since Digital Web Magazine had no idea what their new logo should actually look like, they gave me carte blanche for the initial concepts. Not an easy assignment—many questions started popping into my head. Who do I actually design the logo for? Who is their audience? What does that audience feel comfortable with? And so on... The answers to such questions are fundamental in order to create a decent and representative logotype." (MadMan comments: Am I the only one who thinks their logo looks like a motorbike helmet?)
Reader Comments...
Make that two for helmet. I would love to do a Dilbert/Roger And Me by taking a $5,000 logo and one done by a twelve-year-old, and getting a group of business people to pick. It could be entertaining, if you had enough execs involved. Posted by: on April 5, 2003 12:59 PM
I decided to check out their logo before reading the article just as a test. I wanted to see if I could guess the "attributes" of the logo by myself. I couldn't. I think that's a problem with most logos. I also see a helmet. Posted by: Brian C on April 5, 2003 02:40 PM
"and the swooshing top curve gave our logo a modern and active look." Uh, nope. I wanted to keep mum on this, and in fact would have if this article hadn't appeared; I'm frankly hesitant to publicly crit D-W because I think a great deal of Nick and have gotten a lot out of the magazine in the past. Having said that, this article did go live and did get linked, and so I think I'll just have to go ahead and say what I feel: that's a...well...um...that's not a particularly attractive, nor a very communicative, logo. That's about as diplomatic as I can be. The swooshiness, and its ability to make something look "modern" and "active," hardly needs to be commented on at this late date. The negative space does *not* contain a "W," at least not to me - looks more like a "V." Most critically, the logo doesn't scan as anything particularly suggestive of the Web or of the content to be found in the magazine, either on first glance or after a few weeks of hoping it'd settle. Now I am all too aware just how frustrating it is to work with someone volunteering their labor, someone you like and whose feelings you care about, and not get anywhere close to where you thought you were heading when you set out. I also think it's underappreciated just how much work Nick puts in putting out a quality production. Finally, I'm sure that Kristof is a great guy who tried his best to come up with something meaningful and beautiful. But unfortunately, all of the above being the case is no guarantee of success. My opinion only - as ever, other informed viewpoints may differ. Posted by: Adam on April 6, 2003 11:39 AM
I also see a bird above the meat hook, flying to the left... Or is it a fish tail? Posted by: Frank on April 6, 2003 12:34 PM
I think it's an OK logo, but it doesn't fit in particularly well with the 45-degree-angle elements in the site, maybe if they introduce a few small curves it'll integrate better. I didn't see any specific objects in the design, just a stylised D. A bad client would in this case have demanded a picture of a web with a 'more computery' font and forced the whole design process into an ugly corner. When that happens an experienced designer knows all is lost and they'll just have to think of the money while producing crap work to order.
Yeah, I could see the helmet and the meat hook. I think that they should have tilted the "W" so that it looked more like a W and less like a meat hook. And D-W makes me think of DW, Darkwing Duck. Posted by: Morris Cox on April 7, 2003 02:35 AM
I hate logo re-designs. I'm in the middle of it with a client and can honestly say it's hands down the most frustrating work I'm doing. My gut tells me that, in this day and age, logos for most companies (or in this case, a non-profit) just don't matter. How many do you see on a given day - and of those, how many do you remember? Of the ones you remember, what impact did they have? So many logos just seem to obscure the organization name. Helmet, meathook, sickle, whatever - in most cases I'll only see it for a fraction of a second (if at all) before I'm scanning the content to see if it's of interest. I'm lobbying my client to try something radical - no graphical element to the logo. Just an agreed-upon typeface and format for the organization name. They probably won't go for it...but I sure like the idea of not trying to communicate great meaning and brand attributes in some little 50-pixel square space. Posted by: Boyink on April 7, 2003 10:23 AM
How many do you see on a given day - and of those, how many do you remember? I see an average 185 logos per day. At any given time I can recall 17 and draw them perfectly as vector graphics in Adobe Illustrator. Posted by: on April 7, 2003 11:14 PM
There are so many problems with that logo. But the primary point I wanted to make was; attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder, but there needs to be some kind of consensus as to the message the logo represents. Posted by: boysen on April 8, 2003 09:54 AM
Boyink: I wish you luck. It's not particularly "radical" - there's got to be ten thousand companies that use some form of unaccompanied Helvetica as their dominant CI element - but your point is fundamentally sound. Posted by: Adam on April 8, 2003 11:58 AM
Good points made by all. Adam, you are correct, it's a huge pain to organize a redesign of anything with volunteers... Kristof did a good job in my opinion and he did it for free. Which brings me to my next point, we are not a non-profit company, we are simply an organization of people... everyone on staff has volunteered their spare time to make things happen. So please don't think we spent some huge budget on some logo that doesn't mean much to you. Matt is correct, it doesn't fit well with the 45 degree angles. The point here is that the logo is brand new, the angles and the rest of the design was created in 1998. Yes, 5 years ago. We are working on a redesign and the new look and feel would have been live at the same time the new logo was had everyone on staff been paid for their efforts and working full time on it. But that isn't the case. It's been over a year since the basics of the IA were drafted (see Christina's blueprint book chapter 10)... it's a looong sloooow process. There was nothing I could do to get a full redesign to take place by the March deadline. So you cut your losses and go with what you have; a new logo. As for meat hooks, birds, fishtails, swooshes and pretty much all the other things visualized in these comments, I guess I have only one thing to say. Do you see the words "FedEx" in the Fedral Express logo or do you see an Arrow. For those who have gone to art school you know that about 25% of the elements of a logo have to do with negative space. Other factors such as color, shape, contrast, etc. play a role in the design as well. Beth Cherry wrote a great article on the subject: ...and Andrew Mindi also did a great peice on Principles of Graphic Design ...after reading those two articles, take a moment to draft up a logo for a fictional company... even if you are not (or claim not to be) artistic. You may just surprise yourself. Posted by: Nick Finck on April 8, 2003 02:02 PM
At least the final logo is far more successful than some of the previous iterations: http://www.digitalwebmag.com/tutorials/images/tutorial_2003-04_47.gif ummm....maybe it's just me, but can you say, "phallic"? Posted by: Amy Smith on April 8, 2003 03:38 PM
Do you see the words "FedEx" in the Fedral Express logo or do you see an Arrow. For those who have gone to art school you know that about 25% of the elements of a logo have to do with negative space. Nick, dude! I see the words "FedEx". I wouldn't see the arrow till someone pointed it out to me. If I saw it, I wouldn't get the symbolism till one of you arty types told me. What you art experts have to understand is that the rest of the world didn't go to art school, so all the "meaning" you try and put into logos is lost on us, the common folk. Did you even need a new logo? What does it say about your site that people didn't know already? I think you have a DAMN good site, but I wouldn't have stopped visiting if you had kept the old logo. Your "brand" isn't the logo; it's the interesting content and what people think of your site. Without that, you wouldn't have anything. Posted by: Kirk Sutter on April 8, 2003 04:26 PM
It's not particularly "radical" - there's got to be ten thousand companies that use some form of unaccompanied Helvetica as their dominant CI element - but your point is fundamentally sound Yeah - I should have said quoted radical - I know other companies have done without graphic elements, it would be radical for this client to do so. Fed Ex is an arrow? Never noticed. Too busy trying to figure out why there are different colors. Heck -- I never noticed the string element to the UPS logo that's now being replaced. But I like it better than the new one. Nick - out of curiousity, how long have you been in graphic design? Have the requirements for logos gotten more intense in our digital world? I just think of the last employer I had - an 80 year old company. I'll bet the logo they have now, and are somewhat known for, would never past muster in this day and age. Posted by: Boyink on April 8, 2003 05:15 PM
Nick - To quote Paul Rand: The emphasis is Mr. Rand's. http://tinyurl.com/953w Posted by: Scott M. on April 9, 2003 10:19 AM
Again. All good points. And yes, I agree with the points made. I do agree that only art students would probably see the arrow... I didn't at first, I am not an art student. The problem with the old logo, if you must know, is that it did not have enough unique characteristics to be used as a piece to identify the magazine with. In other words, no one remembered the logo, it did nothing for the site or the product (if you want to call it that). The old logo only tried to make us look like other publications: WebTechniques/New Architect, ComputerWorld, etc. It was an attempt to "fit" in... which, as we later learned, we really should have just stood out as different. That's what the new logo attempts to do. So, I guess if someone say "ya, I read it on Digital Web Magazine" and a person responds "where?" and the responce they get is "you know, they have that phallic logo" ...."oh, right... ok." ..well, I guess it served it's purpose. Anyway, there is no need to go on about this, people will walk away thinking what they do of the logo and how funny it looks.. that's fine, at least they will remember it. Posted by: Nick Finck on April 9, 2003 12:24 PM
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