Tag: branding

Race to Geth ER

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Legion is hurt.  Which ship gets Legion to Geth ER the fastest?  The Normandy, a Turian envoy or a Quarian vessel?

Seriously though, as a self-proclaimed typography snob, I simply cannot condone this message by Starbucks, regardless of how much of a slave I am to their product in general.

I get that creating racial awareness is something that perhaps the world as a whole might benefit from, in spite of how futile I may personally think it is, but I simply loathe when any word has to be broken up in an advertisement, much less twice.

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The epitome of “not mad, just disappointed”

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: The Atlanta Braves break ground on their new ballpark, slated to open in 2017.  It’s new name?  SunTrust Park.

I love the Braves.  I hate SunTrust.

What I’m dealing with here is a perfect conflict of interests.  A catch-22, if you will.

A little backstory: I used to work for SunTrust corporate.  Making signage, assets, collateral materials; all sorts of marketing materials that the company used at their over 3,000 branches across the eastern seaboard.  It wasn’t a glamorous job, but it was for a reputable brand, paid decently, and I worked with some decent people.  After about three years, the company decided that in-house designers were unnecessary, and is so often the case, felt that they would rather pay external companies way more money for the same services, but minus the obligation to pay for benefits.  So they outsourced myself, eight other designers, two copywriters, an editor, among 1,100 other employees throughout the entire company in 2007.

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O’Charley’s new logo looks like tax preparation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I passed an O’Charley’s restaurant last week while running errands, and I couldn’t help but notice the new logo and identity of the chain.   Gone are the soft edges and rounded serifs, and in its place, a text logo that looks like it could it could be typed up in any word processing software in any operating system in existence.

Somewhere out there, in the world of creative, there is an agency that employs a designer that can claim credit for this logo.  They can probably give some convoluted explanation to how they came up with what they did, how the all-caps subtitle of “restaurant + bar (note the plus sign, the clear superior alternative to an ampersand)” is done in such a way to emphasize sophistication and seriousness, despite the fact that it’s still an O’Charley’s chain restaurant.  They can probably defend that it’s more than just a simple string of text, and how it had to be specially kerned to make it look how it does, how the second apostrophe was shrunk, and how it differs from the first, single-straight quotation mark.

But what they can’t really defend is the fact that in spite of all their explanations and rationales to why the O’Charley’s logo looks the way it does now, it looks like a logo that is for like a financial institution, or maybe tax prep software.  It’s probably on account of the green that the new O’Charley’s logo is using, but everything about the new identity screams finance, and not really, food.

Someone actually got paid to make this.  Funny how an industry called “creative” so often times goes in a direction that seems to spit out the absolute antithesis of creativity, and succeed.

When you look at it real fast

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was running on the treadmill when I saw this commercial out of the corner of my eye.  Now I know that it says “play hooky at Hooters,” but when I looked at it really fast, the K in “hooky” merges with Hooters, and suddenly it basically says “Play with Hookers.”

It’s hard to say whether or not this was on accident, as given the nature of the tastefully tacky restaurant franchise, they’re definitely not above going low-brow and subliminal in order to stay remembered.  After all, this is the same company that plastered the phrase “THE BIG D” repeatedly when simply referring to the city of Denver, during some promotion where the winner would get a trip to Denver.

Either way, I thought it was funny.  Playing with hookers, or just going to Hooters, both seem like a good time.  Ultimately, this makes me kind of depressed when Hooters had a supposed opening for a graphic designer position that I would have done anything to get, but it was right before the company went into financial straits, declared Chapter 11, and had a hiring freeze.  Seriously, I would have given up a kidney or some other drastic sacrifice to have gotten a job with fucking Hooters corporate.

I don’t think people understand how this works

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I was at the store the other day, and I saw a kid wearing a shirt that said “I Converse Logo MEXICO.”  Naturally, I get that it’s one of the thousands of parodies that exist based on the iconic slogan/logo of “I ♥ NY,” but it doesn’t change the fact there are now thousands of poorly done parodies that exist in general.  Just because most people can interpret what the intended meaning of a graphic is, doesn’t mean it’s an excuse for it to be complete rubbish.  I really don’t believe people understand how parodying I ♥ NY is supposed to work.  Frankly, I don’t really believe a lot of people understand how a parody itself works, but one thing at a time.

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Not fair. NOT FAIR.

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

See this baseball cap?  I want this baseball cap.  I must have this baseball cap.

It is a piece of bacon.  ON A BASEBALL CAP.  A totally legit, NewEra baseball cap.

I have to have this.

There’s one problem, though.  They’re the baseball cap of the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, a minor-league team of the Triple-A level.  I’ve been to Allentown PA, to see the home of the Iron Pigs, late last season; nice park, in spite of Nazi-like park employees.  The problem is however, the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs are affiliates of the Philadelphia Phillies.  As an Atlanta Braves fan, I very much dislike the Phillies, and if it were up to me, I would like to not support them in any capacity.

But this cap.  It has a piece of bacon on it.

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Where will the chain-hating madness end??

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I was reading this article about how the Red Lobster brand is being considered to be sold off of or restructured into a bastardized spin-off of its former shell by parent company Darden, and I couldn’t help but feel a little melancholy over the notion that Red Lobster in one way shape or form, is dying.  One, I love lobsters, two, Red Lobster’s periodic endless shrimp offer is among the best things in the world, and three, it should be nothing new for my six readers that I’m a nostalgic kind of person who sure, understands the necessity of change, but at the same time isn’t always the most readily accepting of it.

But the point of me writing this post is questioning the modern defiant trend of people who try their hardest to avoid eating at chain restaurants, like a Red Lobster, Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday or Olive Garden.  Even the article alludes to this notion:

It seems that consumers are turning their noses up at hoity-toity sit-down places like Red Lobster and Olive Garden these days in favor of cheaper chains like Chipotle.

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