Tag: branding

Oh, Atlanta #669

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny, when Bubba decided to reopen the state of Georgia, starting with a very auspicious cherry-picked selection of businesses, my first thought was that “hey, this seems like it could be kind of racist, opening up all these businesses that tend to lean towards having mostly black workers and patrons.”  I asked around several people if they thought my opinion possibly held any weight, and the majority of the responses were mostly not really, and that I was more likely the racist for thinking such thoughts.

However since then, the black community has been pretty up in arms about how racist coronavirus is, how it’s a global conspiracy, and other claims, some more outlandish than the others.  But as it pertains to Georgia, when the black community starts echoing the thoughts that I had about how Bubba’s choices of business to reopen the state with, then I feel a little bit validated.

Unfortunately, in spite of the claims of Bubba’s racism, there are plenty of people who are content to do their best to be statistics and perpetuate stereotypes, even if there’s monumental scientific evidence out there that we should all probably still be staying indoors. 

But when Nike releases some new Air Jordans, it’s apparent that even a global pandemic isn’t enough to prevent people from staying indoors, instead choosing to gather in tight crowds and really put each other in the line of fire, all for the sake of trying to get some fucking shoes.

Now before anyone else decides that I’m being racist for thinking that surely not every single person at this Air Jordan release day is black, read the article: Greenbriar Mall.  Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of Atlanta knows that Greenbriar Mall is basically 100% black, save for the few other minorities that have the gumption to open up businesses in a predominantly black mall, but as far as patrons go, it’s basically 100% black.  For context, this is a mall that used to house a Magic Johnson Theater, which were basically only in Los Angeles and a few other sparsely selected jurassic ghettos outside of California.

Either way, this is what we’d ironically classify as “a very Atlanta story” as even in the middle of a pandemic, people still can’t seem to stay away from gathering, as long as Air Jordans are on the line.  Naturally, the internet has had a field day with it, claiming all sorts of racist unflattering remarks, and pointing out why so many people are going out in public when, at the time of this going live was, the shoes were still readily available to purchase online; which then opened up a whole other can of racist remarks and memes.

To some degree, I hold Nike responsible for recklessly (or cerebrally) maintaining the course and releasing these shoes.  Surely they know the pandemonium the releases of Air Jordans tend to do to the sneakerhead community, much less urban, and it’s pretty poor optics that even when people are getting sick and dying out there, they’re content to give people reasons to leave their homes and gather, but that’s just me.

I guess Bubba will be very happy if the black voter base starts taking some more losses on account of them pursuing fucking shoes, but frankly that was probably the intent the entire time when he decided to reopen Georgia.

Among others, fuck the Lakers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Of the numerous things that has pushed me from disenchanted to faith broken with America has been the recent events of how the Personal Paycheck Program, or what most people know as “the small business relief” program, was abused like a child on a Lifetime network special, and ultimately ran out of money, leaving countless small business owners across America dead in the water.

For clarification, what had happened was that a ton of notable, recognizable and most importantly, large businesses, began declaring themselves as small businesses, and began applying for the PPP loans left and right, and the next thing we know is that companies such as Ruths Chris Steakhouse, Shake Shack, Ritz Carlton hotels and W Hotels, among countless large businesses were receiving millions of dollars in relief loans, and eventually the entire PPP program literally ran out of money and said fuck it and fuck you to the rest of all the applicants that were actual small businesses whom the program really was designed for.

Basically, they all gamed the system because America is not the smartest kid in the class in spite of what Americans might believe, and the criteria and literature behind the loan qualifications had more holes than a Baked Potato in Charge Twitter rant, and big businesses were more than happy to capitalize.  Most franchised businesses began applying as individual applicants to qualify and then suddenly Potbelly Sandwich Shop has amassed $10M in loans despite the fact that they’re literally a publicly traded company, while the local sub shop in your neighborhood can’t even get a form letter of rejection, because the US Postal Service is under fire, and there’s no money for fucking postage.

However, among the elites that have received PPP money, one of the ones that ticked a nerve with me was the Los Angeles Lakers basketball organization, which received $4.6M in loans from the program.

The Lakers, an NBA team, which like most professional sport teams, practically prints money, applied for, and received money reserved for small businesses.

Fuck the Lakers.  They’re literally a franchise valued at over $3 billion dollars, and they’ve got the audacity to cry poor and apply for a PPP loan?  To say bullshit on this is about an understatement as saying coronavirus is just a really bad flu.

Continue reading “Among others, fuck the Lakers” →

Los Angeles Rams’ logo – football or news station?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If there was anything that would help get me writing about things other than being a new dad and how I’m often operating on a sleep deficit and spending the expected amount of time changing diapers, it’s a good old fashioned dunking on a rebranded logo.  And the Los Angeles Rams Formerly of St. Louis did just that, futilely trying to get people to pay attention to them and not think of them as another dead franchise that inexplicably cannot survive in a sports-crazed market like LA.

Honestly, in spite of the harsh tone and the likely critical things I’m going to say about it, the overall logo isn’t that turrible.  It says “LA” and then there’s a horn of a ram in it, the point is made, and the objective is completed: LA Rams.

The problem is, I can’t not see a glorified news station logo when I look at it.  The very first thought that came to mind when I saw it was that it looked like it had to be an NBC affiliate’s news logo for Los Angeles.  Like it was born to be a news station logo, not the primary identity of a futbol americano franchise in the NFL, one of the most influential and wealthy sporting entities on the planet.

I mean seriously, the image above is a quick shop job I did to illustrate my point.  If this whole post wasn’t talking about the logo, would anyone stop and think twice about the logo tucked in the bottom corner of any news broadcast?  It fits so seamlessly and could easily be used in any broadcast throughout all of Los Angeles.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that LA just can’t get a break when it comes to professional football.  They’re such a massive market, yet the NFL just inexplicably can’t seem to get their shit together out there.  Even the Knicks were once good in New York, but LA just can’t seem to get people to take the NFL seriously there.  I mean look at the memes that the LA Chragers became when they unveiled their low-effort logo that lasted all of like two days before it was ridiculed to literal death.

I can’t say I bothered to see if the Rams’ new logo was nearly as ridiculed as the Chragers’ one was, but to this snooty graphic designer, all I’ll ever see is a fictitious news station’s logo, waiting to be permanently positioned in the bottom corner of a television screen during a broadcast.

The annual Hall of Fame of bullshit spectacle

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
This screen grab was too classic to not use

Not really news: Derek Jeter is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame

Unfortunately news: Derek Jeter is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but is denied the honor of unanimous induction by one vote

A year ago, when Mariano Rivera was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, as the first man in history to get a 100% unanimous induction, I figured the doors had been blown off, and that we were going to start seeing more guys getting in unanimously.

Prior to Rivera, such a distinction was basically a pipe dream, and throughout the years, fans have witnessed year after year, legend after legend, fail to garner that hallowed 100% vote, no matter who they were.  Cal Ripken, Jr.  Tony Gwynn. Ken Griffey, Jr. Greg Maddux.  These were all guys that were no-brainer locks to make the Hall of Fame, and I have to ask why if they’re such no-brainers, why none of them ever got to 100% unanimous?

Even guys like Chipper Jones, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez, they were champions, pulled in tons of hardware, put up gaudy career stats; everyone knew they were going to get into the Hall of Fame in their first years of eligibility, but why couldn’t any of these guys get a unanimous selection?

I love Mo, as a pitcher and as a human being, but it’s no secret that the BBWAA hasn’t been kind to relief pitchers historically.  In my opinion, Rivera was definitely worthy of a first-ballot induction, but I’m admittedly surprised that he was the first guy to ever get the 100% unanimous.

Was it because he was such a class-act and a known humanitarian?  Just about every baseball fan knew as fierce of a competitor on the field he was, he was as much of a humble and gracious human being off of it.  But that being said, so were guys like Ripken and Gwynn.

Regardless, with Rivera having broken the mold, I figured that there were still a just a few guys left out there that had the chance to also reach the promised land of 100%, with the first one most definitely being Derek Jeter.

Continue reading “The annual Hall of Fame of bullshit spectacle” →

Well, at least it’s no longer called ScumTrust Park

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Shocker of the century: Truist Park becomes the name of the new stadium after the merger between SunTrust and BB&T

Welp, nobody saw that one coming.  And by nobody, I means every single fucking person in Atlanta with a pulse knew that it was going to be Truist Park in the end.

No matter how great it would’ve been if Waffle House swooped in and usurped the naming rights to the stadium, and called it “The Waffle House, home of the Braves.”  Or if the ballpark decided to honor the greatest power hitter of all time and called it like “Hank Aaron Field,” everyone and their mother knew it was going to end up as some soulless, corporate stooge of a name, and once it was announced that the merged bank was going to be called Truist, it was only a matter of time before this obvious news was going to be announced.

The best part is that in spite of the obvious, these corporate stiffs all took the time and resources to make an event of it, justifying the claims of obvious corporate circle jerking.  As if an unveiling was actually needed, anyone with a brain knew the name and what the logo was going to look like before any sort of curtain was ever put on a pedestal.

The sad thing is that no matter all the clowning that Citi Field got when they unveiled, Truist Park is worse.  Sure, the Citi Field logo looked like a Domino’s logo, but at least it was still somewhat attempting to look like base paths and relate to baseball.  Truist Park looks like an Epcot reject with an emblem that looks like the ominous symbol seen on the episode of Black Mirror about the White Bear.

And no clever nickname can be applied to something as lame as “Truist.”  Or ScumTrust for that matter.  Turner Field was often referred to as “the Ted” based on the original ownership, but nothing can really be applied to these bullshit corporate names.

Regardless, in spite of the dunking I want to do about Truist Park, at least when the day is over it’s no longer called SunTrust.  Despite the fact that the bank itself isn’t necessarily dead, the lack of identity helps mask their bullshit, and I can probably stomach actually going to a game in the future once my kid gets here, and daddy wants to take his daughter to her very first baseball game.

This car FUCKS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, there was a guy my then-group of friends knew that got a Subaru Impreza.  He was one of those guys that at the time, nobody really cared a tremendous amount about, but nobody really had the heart to tell him to fuck off.  Plus, as long as he felt included in the group, he could always be relied upon to bring food and/or snacks to any sort of arranged gatherings.

Anyway, aside from the fact that he bought an automatic transmission, we often passive-aggressively clowned on him for his car, because that’s what a bunch of Initial D-inspired auto enthusiasts did amongst each other.  Other points of ridicule were how he got his car literally months before the WRX was unleashed, how he got a huge speeding ticket in Pennsylvania for driving like a retard, and the time he wrecked because he thought AWD made him invincible.

My favorite method of trolling him was that I often times told him that he made a mistake getting an Impreza, and that the real coup of coolness would’ve been if he had gotten a Forester instead; the Impreza’s dorky but more utilitarian older brother.  Sure, the Forester was definitely more of a family car, but it was always fun to glorify the cargo room and the utility of the Forester over his Impreza.

The best was when we discovered the existence of a Forester STI, that Subaru released overseas, which was a jacked-up high-performance variant of the Forester, which not only retained all the utility of the original Forester, but had all sorts of performance upgrades that made it like two classes above what this guy got in his automatic Impreza.  That’s the car he should’ve gotten instead.

Needless to say, since then, I’ve always carried somewhat of a positive connotation with the Forester, even if it stemmed from ironic, griefing purposes.

Continue reading “This car FUCKS” →

Not art + design

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because every gym on the planet is seemingly contractually obligated to be airing ESPN on at least one television, I saw this story about how the coach of the Cleveland Browns was spotted wearing this t-shirt that said “Pittsburgh started it,” as commentary over an incident a few weeks ago where the Browns’ Myles Garrett and the Steelers’ Mason Rudolph got into a scuffle ending with Garrett ripping Rudolph’s helmet off of him and swinging it at his head.  Garrett has been suspended indefinitely by the NFL for basically assault, and Rudolph was fined a bunch of money for remarks that supposedly started the whole incident which may or may not have been racist.

But this isn’t a post about the incident, because when the day is over, I really don’t give two shits about an organization that somehow thinks organized dog death fighting is a lesser crime than kneeling during the national anthem.   No, I’m more incensed over the fact that on the aforementioned t-shirt, is an actual signature on it from a supposed “art + design” company as if printing a t-shirt with three words in the Garfield font (Cooper Black) is remotely anything considered art or design.

This is the kind of shit that really makes me jaded towards the creative industry as a whole.  A bunch of hacks out there that take the most low-effort bullshit, slap a logo or take credit for it, and call it “design.”  And when challenged, comes a deluge of bullshit about minimalism or simplicity.  And then there’s legions of like-minded sheep who think it’s the most innovative idea in the world, and then it goes viral and people actually benefit from it.

Amazingly, the “company” that signed this shirt that I could easily plagiarize in 2 seconds, appears to be an actual company that actually makes all sorts of Cleveland-centric apparel and merch, almost all of which is 78,000% more creative and contains actual design than Pittsburgh Started It.  But because they’re an actual company, they do have the audacity to try to monetize their low-hanging fruit, and to no surprise at all, are selling these bullshit shirts for $28 a pop.  But realistically, even if it was some individual who calls themselves a studio, they’d still try to sell them for $35, because they’re broke-ass poor and trying to capitalize on going viral.

Naturally, people are buying them because they clearly have way too much money.

Either way, if I had more than 0 readers, I’m sure I’d inevitably be accused of being jealous that someone out there is making money on such a low-budget idea.  And they’d be entirely right, because I would love to make actual money on such little effort.  Why the fuck can’t something controversial and nationally known happen for an Atlanta team, that I could easily make into some sort of meme, call it design and cash in on?