Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To someone like me, there is beauty in symmetry; my personal view on aesthetics is typically favoring towards things with good balance. I like the concept of balance outright, usually believing that a life well lived is a life that’s simply got good balance throughout the numerous aspects of living.
Working where I do, I see the Georgia Tech logo pretty much every single day. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I support Virginia Tech and that without fail I will get stuck behind a deliberately troll-driving GT shuttle on a daily basis, I have grown to have a negative connotation whenever I see the GT logo; which is everywhere. Which has made me become critical towards it, naturally.
But anyway, the Georgia Tech logo is flawed. Every time I see the flaw, I can’t help but stare at it, making me think mean things like that much like the school itself, is kind of a symbol of failure. The extent to which I believe that is subject to how many of my friends and acquaintances that actually went to Georgia Tech are currently present, but all biases aside, I do believe that it’s a flawed logo.
If you haven’t noticed yet, the picture above is an animated gif explaining the flaw, and where it is.
In layman’s terms, the left side of the T is disproportionately too long. Not by a tremendous amount, but noticeable to anyone with any sort of analytical eye. I understand that it’s due to the nature of the interlocking G with the T, but there’s really no rule against or excuse to why the right stroke of the T couldn’t be elongated to remain consistent with the left.
It’s not like it would be a difficult fix to apply, if anyone cared. Literally, the four vector points that make up the right side of the T and its serif could be selected in any vector software like Illustrator and be elongated the 1/8th of a unit to match the left side. In work-speak, it’s LITRALLY. An easy fix that should take all of two minutes.
But I can see why this wouldn’t ever happen, especially with my own marketing experiences. Altering one logo means jeopardizing the relevancy of a lifetime’s worth of branding and marketing. Countless apparel, signs, and school collateral would become obsolete from two minutes of correctional work, and in some cases require redoing (read: spending more money) to anyone with a perfectionist mindset. It would also give confirmation to the claim that the logo was indeed flawed for numerous decades, and nobody wants to admit failures.
So despite the fact that the Georgia Tech logo is in fact flawed, I wouldn’t put any money on that it’s going to get fixed any time soon. The school would rather continue their existence with a sub-par identifier than admit that someone long ago, be it through malice or simply a lack of talent and eye, or maybe both, fucked up on their logo.
