![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/goodlogos.jpg\")
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In my humble opinion, a logo should mean something.\u00a0 That being said, I do in fact believe that the business world is full of hundreds upon hundreds of \u201cmeaningless\u201d logos and identities.\u00a0 If it\u2019s a company\u2019s goal to create a logo that stands out, that\u2019s understandable and justifiable, but when the day is over, there\u2019s still a chance that it\u2019s essentially meaningless; if what\u2019s created doesn\u2019t symbolize\u00a0anything<\/em>, then it\u2019s imperfect in my opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n Whenever I think about logos out there, that I think are \u201cgreat logos,\u201d off the top of my head, the featured above ones stand out.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like the Mets as a team, but damn if I don\u2019t think their logo is a fantastic blend of meaning, symbolism and an aesthetically pleasing color combination.\u00a0 The skyline features symbols of the five New York boroughs, a bridge overlapping them to symbolize connection between them all, the Mets word mark in classic script, all encapsulated within a fairly subtle baseball silhouette.<\/span><\/p>\n FedEx seems like a fairly inconspicuous word mark logo, but when the arrow within the E and X in Ex were explained to me, it was one of those can\u2019t not see it anymore moments, which is subtle genius, because the arrow represents the forward progress of shipping logistics.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Denver Nuggets logo, I\u2019ll admit that I\u2019m not that aesthetically impressed by, but every single element of it is so methodically thought out and considered, that I can\u2019t help but respect it as a meaningful logo.\u00a0 From the thick, \u201cWild West\u201d serif-style font used for the word, integration of the Rocky Mountains which Denver is famously known for residing near, to the prevalent use of the color gold to represent the gold nuggets Denver was historically known for harvesting, every single element of the logo has meaning, and is brought together in a pretty aesthetically solid single unit.<\/span><\/p>\n Naturally, I wouldn\u2019t blather on about logos like this if there was no impetus behind it; and since logos are somewhat of a creative endeavor, and despite my general lack of creativity at my job, it\u2019s still a part of what I do, this is naturally a story about how I was tasked with creating some logo options, and how it predictably went wrong, because I\u2019m writing about it.\u00a0 Surely, I wouldn\u2019t write about something I succeeded in??<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, I was tasked with creating some logo\u00a0comps<\/em><\/strong>, for a sub-team within a segment of this gigantic company that I work for.\u00a0 Because for whatever reason, they feel that they\u2019re so big and mighty compared to their peers that they can develop and have their own identity within.\u00a0 From the start, the only intel that I was provided was an acronym (which is an ironically sad story within itself), a vague idea of what the team does, and one key color that\u00a0had<\/em>\u00a0to be integrated into it.<\/span><\/p>\n Long story short, I focused on the key element of what the team does, integrated numerous options of the acronym into the artwork, and utilized the requested colors.\u00a0 I gave them five options that showed varied typeface options, styles in which the artistic elements could be utilized, as well as examples of how the logos might look on actual real-life collateral material.<\/span><\/p>\n Most importantly, I explained that these are comps, which is to say that these are prototypical materials, in which any acceptable elements or concepts could be extracted and saved for future use, and any disliked elements or concepts could be tossed and discarded.\u00a0 So naturally, my options were accepted as finalized, polished options, open to all sorts of subjective criticism from people who didn\u2019t really know what they wanted in the first place, but have all the ammunition in the world to explain what they\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0want.<\/span><\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to say that they absolutely hated and loathed everything I provided to them, quite the contrary, they didn\u2019t mind some of my more minimalistic, yet more meaning full options, compared to the litany of repurposed and color-modified iStock.com vector pieces this company has been using for years prior to me.\u00a0 But they gave me absolutely no criticism that was remotely constructive and entirely subjective.\u00a0 It was pointed out to me that my pieces looked repetitive, save for fonts and conceptual construction.<\/span><\/p>\n Selectively ignored were the parts where I stated that these were ideas and not polished products, and that I was open to interpretation to what they might actually want.\u00a0 Such is often the case in the creative industry, but sadly, despite doing creative work for a living, I\u2019m not really in the creative industry anymore, but in something vastly further back in prehistoric times, where nobody can visualize, nobody can imagine, and nobody can actually explain what they want to see.<\/span><\/p>\n My manager, trying to do their best to deaden the non-constructive criticism with rhetoric about unleashing more creativity and that more improvement should come from my end, stated that \u201cwe\u2019re the designer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Are we really?<\/span><\/p>\n When the day is over, we the designers are ultimately still trying to cater to the aesthetics of a person(s) who has the final say, and the creative process gets to a point where if the end user really has no clue of what they\u2019re looking for, they\u2019re basically taking away the title of \u201cdesigner\u201d from the designer, and putting it on themselves, when they\u2019re scrambling and going back and forth, picking and choosing, revising a hundred times, something that they have no idea what they\u2019re looking for.<\/span><\/p>\n The creative process goes both ways, and any designer that claims they don\u2019t get exasperated with a clueless client is lying, because eventually every designer reaches a point where an assignment stops being a creative challenge, and becomes a tiresome exercise in futility that they just want to get over as soon as possible so that they can pursue a creative challenge elsewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n Thankfully, this logo request was more of a side-project than my day-to-day workloads, and I\u2019m back on an assignment to where I can put this on the back burner.\u00a0 To no surprise, the sub-team seemed to favor options that were quite literally, repurposed iStock images, where the colors were modified to match their criteria, and their acronym was integrated into it.\u00a0 Personally, although I can\u2019t deny that they\u2019re eye-catching and aesthetically engaging, I can\u2019t derive any meaning out of what they\u2019re liking.\u00a0 Without meaning, they\u2019re kind of pointless, but I guess given the nature of my job, that too isn\u2019t really that big of a surprise.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my humble opinion, a logo should mean something.\u00a0 That being said, I do in fact believe that the business world is full of hundreds upon hundreds of \u201cmeaningless\u201d logos and identities.\u00a0 If it\u2019s a company\u2019s goal to create a logo that stands out, that\u2019s understandable and justifiable, but when the day is over, there\u2019s … Continue reading Logos, selective hearing and non-constructive criticism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[130,131,94,15],"class_list":["post-42096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-art","tag-branding","tag-graphic-design","tag-og"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42098,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42096\/revisions\/42098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}