Tag: branding

Jaguar’s new logo = Publix Supermarkets

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Trent Crimm, The Independent: Jaguar unveils new branding and logo and the crowd goes mild but eventually more into ire

I don’t particularly care much for Jaguar as far as cars go, they’ve always been a little pretentious and overrated as far as my tastes are concerned, but I also wouldn’t put them in the category of cars that I wouldn’t ever get if I had the means necessary.  Their aesthetics aren’t really my cup of tea, but I can like what I see on a paper when it comes to performance specs.

That being said, put me in the camp of people whose interest in the car company most definitely trended downward upon seeing their rebranding.  Jaguar becoming JaGUar, with this absolute masterclass of horseshit spinning from their corresponding press release:

seamlessly blended upper and lower case characters in visual harmony”

Nah, of course it’s not as cerebral as that.  The designer, and I use that term loosely, didn’t like the way the lowercase G looked and didn’t like the extra stroke that the lower case U had and went with upper case variants which looked more seamless; and then the right VPs, with their wealth of artistic credibility, happened to like the way it looked, gave it the green light, and away we go.

Looking at it made me immediately think about Publix Supermarkets’ logo and possibly the Beats by Dre identity,* but mostly Publix, and it always amazes me when the brand designers of the world don’t really take any time to research the logos of the world and take a modicum of effort to not look like someone else’s identity.  Because then rogue designers like me can’t clown on them and make the easy swap of logo into what they really look like, and if I’m someone with any clout, or at least tempted to try and engage Publix on social media and post this graphic just to see their reaction.

*also there’s this regional adult store chain that also utilizes a similar typeface that I always see billboards for while driving to Disney World that is somewhat related to the jaguar animal kekeke

All the same, it’s kind of sad.  I might not have been that high on Jaguar as a brand, but their identity was pretty unmistakable, with the silhouette of the jaguar leaping over a fairly nondescript bold all-caps wordmark.  But there’s this overarching cry in the design community, that modern branding is all metamorphosizing into a very diluted pool of vanilla “safe” logos that are all looking the same and homogenized into these blobs of non-personality.  Serifs and symbols have become enemies, variations of Helvetica Neue and Gotham are overtaking visual identities everywhere, and with JaGUar’s rebranding, another long-standing reputable brand has deliberately chosen to converge with the masses and adopt a boring, vanilla, forgettable identity, once the initial reactions and internet ridicule all die down.

That being said, I think it’s only a matter of time before JaGUar releases some turd on wheels that’s a hybrid crossover CUV that looks just like a Corolla Cross or a Buick Encore, and then we will truly know that JaGUar has really given up on trying to compete in the market as much as they’re just trying to blend in and hide in plain sight.

I mean with a logo that looks like this, they’re already halfway there.

NXT’s new blets are a let down

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In case you missed it, as part of the show’s official launching on theCW Network, NXT has rebranded and as a part of the rebranding, have unveiled new and updated championship blets.

In one hand, this should’ve been predictable if I were to even think of the possibility of redesign, seeing as how for the last few years, through NXT 2.0, and whatever the gold logo’d variant after it was called, the title blets had remained almost entirely the same from their last versions from the Triple H black and gold branded NXT; most identifiable by the giant X’s in the middle of the logo on all titles in circulation.

But on the other hand, I’m very unimpressed by the new blet designs for their top men’s and women’s titles, and I can only imagine how vanilla and boring the tag team blets are going to be, and possibly the North American blets if they choose to redesign considering how little the NXT logos were on those.

Renderings of the blets outside of the shiny television lights don’t do them any favors, and you can see how generally lacking in thought and design there is behind the new blets.  They’re regurgitating the straps from the black and gold era which is clearly dictating the design of the plates as a whole, and there’s really not a whole lot of innovation with these updated designs.

NXT grew to a point where NXT championship reigns were being widely accepted as world title reigns for superstars fortunate enough to get to that level, but with the blets looking like this, I’m thinking that they’re reverting back to looking like developmental champions rather than actual world title caliber.

Art nerd philosophy [one] is that fewer things are indicative of mediocrity than constantly rebranding and changing the aesthetics, because changes are only being made at a superficial level, and not necessarily to the more important functional and systemic ones.  NXT 2.0 was a pretty comprehensive rebrand from top to bottom, all the way to execution, but it really wasn’t when 2.0 ended, and other than moving networks, I can’t really imagine what functional and systemic changes they have in store for theCW-NXT (CWNXT?).

But as observed above, they’d been operating NXT 2.0 with even older NXT title blets for so long, that by now a full comprehensive rebranding isn’t necessarily a bad idea either, it’s just that I don’t care much for the “design” of the identity or the blets themselves because of:

Art nerd philosophy [two] is that on a long enough timeline, everyone’s logo and identity seems to inevitably turn into one of being in Arial/Helvetica, specifically a variant of Helvetica Neue.  There are countless examples out there of notable companies and corporations that have rebranded for almost no justifiable reasons, but always tend to take a timeless classic logo, and make an updated version where any script or character is stripped and is usually replaced by some boring, soulless, vanilla sans-serif font, usually wrapped in some rhombus.

NXT is no exception to this rule, with the new logomark being literally the letters in Helvetica Neue 95 Black with a little bit of manual kerning to have the characters butt into each other, but is otherwise another example of a boring, vanilla and soulless rebranding.

Why companies are so hell bent to not go back to logos that worked is beyond me, Burger King has reverted back to an old iteration of their older logos, why can’t NXT go back in time and revert back to the Hunter-era of NXT’s branding?  Then the blets wouldn’t have had to have been re-designed and recreated, but typing that out I’m reminded of the fact that the goal is to push and sell merchandise, so I supposed going back in time is kind of counterproductive to that objective.

Either way, even if I had the fluid disposable income to get more blets for the collection I can’t display, I have zero interest or desire to pick up a replica of this new CWNXT championship blet.  My NXT collection is already well-represented with a Hunter-era NXT championship and North American championship, and I don’t see any need to add to it from a mediocre pool.

Who would have guessed a business geared almost entirely to white guys would struggle?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Sauce: Topgolf to be spun off, out of Callaway’s portfolio, owned

I don’t really know why, but hearing about the general suffering and decline of Topgolf makes me happy.  I don’t really like or care for golf, and I’ve been to a Topgolf like twice; primarily because they were work team outings, and the pressure for the optics of being present outweighed my general ambivalence for golf, plus there was free food and drink, and it was on company time, so it beat being at work, working, but for the most part, I wasn’t impressed at all, and was just as happy to leave (early) as I was getting to imbibe on company-paid comestibles.

But really, I have no stake in Topgolf, and yet it still makes me feel smug satisfaction at hearing about their company’s struggles, bad enough to where Callaway the golf company, has expressed their intent to effectively boot them out of their portfolio, and leave them hanging as a standalone company, as opposed to being part of their family.  Frankly, I didn’t know Callaway was big enough of a company to have a portfolio beyond golf clubs and apparel, but seeing as how 60% of the United States is white, I guess it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise.

I guess it’s because at the very root of things, I see Topgolf as a wholly unnecessary thing that the world doesn’t need, as well as tremendous wastes of space.  I mean seriously, in the space of any Topgolf could be an entire subdivision of single-family homes.  A moderately aesthetically pleasing condominium along with some small businesses and restaurants.  Pretty much anything is more societally efficient than some gaudy monuments to the whitest activity in history than a giant ass field, with some 250 ft. poles and nets for people to whack golf balls around on.

Seeing a Topgolf anywhere tells me everything I need to know about a specific region, and typically wherever there’s a Topgolf, I generally know that the surrounding area is going to be a really kind of douchey, overly-white people vibe, and I probably wouldn’t enjoy myself at any surrounding restaurants or businesses within a few mile radius.

Needless to say, it brings me smug satisfaction to hear that they’re not doing as financially well as their investors hope they would be doing, because what a surprise, a business that primarily caters to a really niche, predominantly white community, would inevitably begin to decline once people realized how stupid it was to whack golf balls all day long, and there being little room for business evolution or diversity in services, other than overpriced food and booze.

I’m hoping for the day in which I’ll drive through the City of Atlanta again, and the Topgolf that’s in Upper West Midtown is closed down, and probably replaced with a CubeSmart.  I don’t like CubeSmarts either, but frankly in a tale of two evils, they can at least be serviceable and useful to people of all walks of life, and not be just some niche douchey white guy thing like Topgolfs are.

Happy Trails, Walt that doesn’t suck up all my money

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

AP: Walt Ehmer, CEO of Waffle House, dies at the age of 58

I don’t know anything about this man, Walt Ehmer, but I can say that I am a fan of the company that he ran for the last 22 years, and for that reason alone he has my respects and condolences to hear about his passing.  And like the title of this post says, he’s a Walt that hasn’t been hoovering up my money for the last decade, and has in fact, been saving me money conversely with Waffle House’s reasonable prices for unhealthily satisfying garbage food, to which I give the man even more respect for bringing me pound-for-pound happiness that’s hard to match.

It might seem like this is leaning towards being satirical in nature, but the passing of Waffle House’s CEO really is sad news to hear, not just from the standpoint that all loss of life is usually sad, but because I really am a fan of Waffle House, the brand, the company and the product, so it is sad to hear that they lost their commander-in-chief, at such a relatively young age, at just 58 years.

For many years, Jen and I had a Christmas tradition of going to Waffle House on Christmas Day, because I didn’t really want to go home, and we were as close to as family as we had for each other.  I would get a grand slam and a waffle, and for several of those years, I didn’t yet know that I had an intolerance to eggs, and would suffer the consequences of my breakfast choices later, chalking it up solely to being greasy Waffle House, but it never deterred me nor tarnished my opinions of the food in general, and I really enjoyed all those relaxing Christmas mornings of getting Waffle House with one of my closest friends among the other vagabonds who opted to have chill Christmases too.

Waffle House trips were always on the table after drunken Halloween parties, New Years parties or any other social event that ended in later hours where my friends and I would be buzzed, didn’t want the night to end yet, and greasy hashbrowns and waffles sounded like an incredible idea.  No matter how many other people shared the same sentiment and as crowded as they always were, we were never in a position where we had to get turned away or look for somewhere else to go, because we would always be seated, always be served, and no matter how inebriated I might’ve been in any of those visits, I always treated the staff politely and with respect, because there’s more merit to being a happy drunk than an asshole who starts fights.

Which brings us to the obvious cult classic of Waffle House, the knock-down, drag-em-out, World Star battle royales that have occurred at the restaurants since the inception of the company, and long under the guidance of Walt Ehmer as well.  There’s pretty much no such thing as a Waffle House fight that wasn’t viral, wasn’t entertaining in their own ironic way, and wasn’t memorable in some way, shape or fashion.  The fact that a Waffle House Fight™ occurred pretty much every single week somewhere in the vast network of 1,900+ stores across the east coast, and the company just keeps chugging along goes to show the gritty resilience of the brand and company, that I’m not going to just credit Ehmer for, but he had to have known that they were going on, but frankly if he’s as southern educated as a Georgia Tech Trustee chairman would be, knew that if it wasn’t broke, don’t fix it.

I digress, this isn’t supposed to be waxing poetic about how great Waffle House is, but to pay my respects and bid happy trails to the guy that’s been holding the ship steady for a company that has provided such greatness, so that effect, happy trails, Walt, and let’s hope that whomever succeeds you is as successful at not rocking the boat and keeping things status quo as well as you did.

Columbus Clingstones: what, you were expecting something better from a Braves affiliate?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

MiLB: Atlanta Braves’ AA-affiliates formerly known as the Mississippi Braves, formally change their name to the Columbus Clingstones, with their move to Columbus, Georgia

Originally, I was excited at the notion that along with the move out of racist-ass bumfuck Pearl, Mississippi, the Double-A Braves would be getting a brand-new team name and identity, steering them away from the homogenized and stuffy Also-Braves of Mississippi.  The AA Braves could have the opportunity to be an actual, fun, minor league team instead of being a minor league squad beholden to the stuffy and constricting brand standards of the Atlanta Braves Corporation, as they had been over the last, well since the existence of Braves Minor League Baseball.

But at the same time, I knew that I had to temper my expectations, because baseball in general doesn’t like to rock the boat too much, and for every Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, Rocket City Trash Pandas, Hub City Spartanburgers or any chintzy and creative minor league squad that appears out of nowhere, there are four other boring teams out there, like the Salem Red Sox, St. Lucie Mets, Fredericksburg Nats, and other squads that put the bare minimum of effort into their existences, and hope that by solely being present and loosely affiliated with their parent clubs, they will draw attendance.  And if I had to wager what side of the spectrum that an Atlanta Braves affiliate was going to lean towards, it definitely wasn’t going to be on the side where “fun” was, because fun doesn’t always necessarily equate to cashmoney.

So I was about as surprised as learning that global warming isn’t fake news when the news finally broke, of what the new Columbus Baseball Club was going to call themselves, and it was the Columbus Clingstones.

As I imagine most people’s reactions probably were, mine was first and foremost, what the fuck is a clingstone?

According to Google AIoverlord:

A clingstone is a type of stone fruit with flesh that sticks firmly to the pit, making it more difficult to remove than other fruits. Clingstone peaches are a common example of this type of fruit. 

And my first reaction was, oh, so there’s a difference between the peaches I like, where the pit falls right off, and the peaches that I always regret buying, where the flesh sticks to the pit and I always feel like I’m wasting delectable peach flesh when I have to cut around it to enjoy my fucking fruit, and it turns out that I’m not a fan of actual clingstones, and I’m most definitely not a fan of the name, Columbus Clingstones.

So, it figures that the Braves dropped the ball when it came to having a minor league affiliate with a name that is of below-average excitement.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the Emperors of Rome, and I like the clusterfuck that ended up with the Gwinnett Stripers, but the team had an opportunity to rise into the upper echelon of memorable and noteworthy minor league squads, but to no surprise, much like the organization’s entire modus operandi, stick to something vanilla, safe, boring and mostly forgettable in the vast pool of minor league baseball teams.

I will say though, as not mad just disappointed I am in the lame as name of Clingstones, I do have to give credit to the merch team, for running with the lameduck ball they were handed.  Although I’m not a fan of actual clingstone peaches, I still love peaches the fruit, and they are easily in my top-3 favorite fruits.  And I have a soft spot for mascots that are basically just inanimate objects given eyes and limbs, so that being said, I do appreciate the branding that the Clingstones have done, even if I think the name is booty.

That being said, I do want a shirt of the peach mascot, and I would consider getting a 59fifty cap if there’s a variant where it’s just the peach mascot, but I wouldn’t want anything that actually said Clingstones on it, because that’s how much I loathe the name.

So overall, the name is trash, but the execution of the branding has been done pretty well.  Unfortunately, the name is still set in stone at this point, and there’s no part of me that doesn’t connote the prefix “cling” as a negative, from clingy people to turds that cling to the tips of your dog’s fur after they take a crap that they end up wiping on your floor, so the general consensus to the whole unveiling of the Braves’ AA affiliate is a net-negative.  But then again, expecting anything dynamic and exciting out of the Atlanta Braves organization, even if they’re not officially owned by them anymore, is still like expecting to win a lottery, and this all frankly comes as no surprise.

DC’s Absolute Universe logos absolutely suck

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t dislike DC Comics, but I’m definitely one of those fans that feels like no matter what they do, no matter what they try, it always seems like it falls flat, and when they’re inevitably compared to Marvel, they’re always this extraordinary distant second place.  I love Batman, and I have no qualms with really any other DC property, but in my opinion, I just feel like DC in particular has fallen a little too victim to the changing of the times and ideals of the world, and have been way too quick to pull the plug on long-term storytelling, and retconned things so rapidly and so frequently that it’s hard to even tell what’s canon versus what’s just some blow-off one-off.

It’s like the comic industry is truly no different than the rest of the working world in that nobody stays put long enough to see through any chances at some good long-term storytelling or even just a year’s worth of comics these days, and the industry as a whole is full of convoluted, clunky crap that I have little interest in reading on the monthly, and prefer to read about it later on Wikipedia synopses, so that I can then go, what the fuck?

Anyway, in yet another reconning of the universe, DC Comics is apparently going in the route called the Absolute universe, which I’m guessing is a lot like when Marvel launched the Ultimate universe, but the fact of the matter is that it’s still a hard reset of all the flagship properties, with hopes of boosting sales, engaging the newer, even more ADD generation, and that it’s easier to start over from scratch versus even attempting to pick up the pieces from the latest wave of employee turnover.

And part of the entire reconning of the company, for some reason, they saw fit to redesign a bunch of logos of notable properties.  And if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my career as a creative, fewer things (attempt to) mask mediocrity than the changing of logos of a notable brand(s), or making them in the first place, for inconsequential purposes.  I mean, the City of Atlanta probably burns $10M a year on making logos and branding stupid bullshit while half of that is probably skimmed into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats to begin with.

But most noteworthy among the rebrandings were the new logomarks for three of their most flagship properties: Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman.  And as the title of this post clearly states, they all absolutely suck.

Batman’s new logo silhouette has been transformed into a multi cutter tool’s blade, seeing as how it’s a very lightly serrated rectangle now.  It seriously looks like if I were to trace this as a stencil onto a piece of sheet metal, cut it out and jerry-rig it into my Ryobi, I could probably use it to fairly efficiently cut through plastics or foams, if I were still at the stage of my life where I would make costumes for Dragon*Con.

Wonder Woman’s logo now isn’t too far from its old iteration, but much like many things that are feminine in nature and display now, it’s been widened, fattened and made to look all thicc, because it’s okay if not all women don’t look like Jim Lee interpretations of females, especially in comics.  But in doing so, it’s almost as if they’ve been successfully bullied out of their own original identity by the growing Whataburger company, who didn’t really do a good job with their own branding to not act like they weren’t completely lifting the original Wonder Woman emblem in the first place.

So let the record show that the regional fast food burger company has successfully bullied the vaunted Wonder Woman out of using her own fucking identity.  Poor form, DC.

Finally, we have Superman’s logo, which at least, manages to at least salvage their traditional five-sided pentagon shape, and is the one logo that seems to retain the closest to its original iteration.  But much like in the world of typography, the original serifs have been lopped off of the S, and for whatever reason, the top left part of the emblem looks really fucking weird to me, because there’s no break in the red from the S and the edge of the emblem and it all bleeds together looking sloppy.  I can interpret that the general thickness of the S probably wouldn’t accommodate for there needing to be any space near the edge of the emblem, but it just looks really off, like Capcom’s shitty logo for not putting any space in the second C and the O of their wordmark that bothers the shit out of me.

And if you were to focus on the yellow parts alone, it looks like a really erect dick about to really overshoot the toilet underneath it, and I hope that any of my zero readers were to read this observation, they would become unable to unsee it, and spread the opinion out to the rest of the world like an obnoxious virus.

So, in conclusion, DC Comics felt the need to reset their shitty universe once again, and for some reason decided to rebrand some of their most iconic properties in the process.  And in changing logos that never needed to be changed in the first place, we’re left with a saw blade, a fat version of the Whataburger logo, and a dick and toilet emblem in the end.

gg dc, wp.

Don’t, stop, comeback

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As if I had any more reason to like Costco more than I already do: policy change rolling out where customers must scan their membership cards at the door in order to enter, hopes that this cracks down on lax entrance policies for non-members; naturally this results in a lot of butt-hurt customers, most of which aren’t actually members and are just full of piss and salt that they can no longer freeload their way into the exclusive membership warehouse without escort from an actual member

When I originally heard of this change coming up, I didn’t think anything of it.  Being a paying card-carrying member, I shouldn’t have to give any thought about it, it’s just a difference of scanning my card at the door instead of showing it to some human being hardly paying attention to photo on the physical card itself and whether or not it matched my face.

The only person I share the account with is mythical wife, and the one time she ever received any resistance for trying to use my Costco Visa, I simply had a secondary card issued in her name and photograph so that it wouldn’t ever be an issue again in the future.

So back to the original point, the change of requirement to scan a card at the door doesn’t affect my household one iota.  As far as I’m concerned, the only people it affects are grubby cheapskate non-paying non-members who have a family member or friend who probably has Costco credit cards, and have given their physical membership card to them, to where they’ve been enjoying the benefits of a paid Costco membership without actually having to pay for them. 

These are the motherfuckers who are all pissy and up in arms currently at the policy change, because their freeloading ways are going to come to an end the minute their preferred Costco runs out these scanners, and they’ll be caught in the flesh when photograph on the screen doesn’t match their own physical faces.

And to these cheap assholes I say, fuck you, good riddance.  The membership fee is $65 a year, which is barely $5 a month.  I probably gain that $5 a month back whenever I purchase bananas from Costco, seeing as how they seem to be able to justify 3-4 lbs of bananas for like $1.99 and everyone in my household loves bananas.  If you’re the type getting bent out of shape over $5 a month, you honestly probably shouldn’t be shopping at Costco in the first place, seeing as how it’s nigh impossible to get out of there without dropping $100 a visit, before I even consider getting my $1.50 hotdog and fountain drink.

But really, I hope that all these cheapskates denouncing Costco and claiming they won’t ever come back, actually hold true to their words and don’t bend the knee and drop their $65 a year to become members themselves.  Costco trips are already crowded enough as it is, and I’m really hoping that this culling of cheapskates will help thin the crowds out a little bit in the parking lot and in the store itself, to where I can go on a Sunday and not feel like I’m on the cusp of being at Costco Shanghai at times, and I can have slightly reduced stress crowds the next time I go.

When the day is over, I have all the faith in the world that Costco is making the right choice; most everything else they do in the name of business seems to work out just fine for themselves, as well as often times aligns well with my own personal beliefs and ideologies.  And cutting the fat of fat cheapskates from my in-store experiences is definitely something that I can get behind, and I tip my cap, once again, to Costco.