The demise of the logo design industry?

For your perusal – a logo-trashing article that offers up some interesting points of view. In asking the question ‘ What does the London 2012 Olympic logo prove?’ syndicated columnist Naseem Javed comes to the conclusion that “there is something seriously wrong with the logo-driven branding industry at large”. Heady stuff. Certainly worth a looksee…

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the new London 2012 Olympics logo. However, there is something seriously wrong with the logo-driven branding industry at large.

Nothing wrong with the new London 2012 Olympics logo? Oh contraire. There is so much wrong with the logo that it’s next to impossible to list them all. Regardless of whether the logo is ‘good’ is perhaps the least important part of the discussion. It’s the fact that the logo is so universally despised and hated that makes it a failure. A logo that’s very mission statement, it’s essence, was to ‘bring people and cultures together’, has managed only to arouse a hatred which I’ve never seen towards any logo (save the Nazi swastika I suppose). Oh, I guess one could argue that the logo is a ‘uniter’ and completed it’s mission (yep – managed to unite everyone against it, the organizers, and the poor saps responsible for the design). The fact that the animated version was causing epileptic seizures only added to the schadenfreude tone of the roll-out. However, using this example as an indication of what’s going on in the ‘logo design industry’ is a bit of a stretch.

This new logo clearly proves that as we approach 2012, global society will not respond to conventional logos or graphics, but only to these kinds of insignificant, dysfunctional and obscure design works which will eventually become branding norms throughout the world. This clearly proves the lingering demise of the logo-branding industry.

Roh-oh. Not sure I like the sound of that – “the lingering demise of the logo-branding” industry. Time to change careers? Though using the recent kerfuffle about the London Olympics logo as proof of anything is a bit far-fetched methinks. It was so not a trend that the dust-up about it reverberated around the toobz for weeks. Granted, people did respond to the mark, but in a way that the Olympic committee could hardly have imagined.

Let’s face it, first of all in this hyper-accelerated society, the logos are almost dead. Fifty years ago, customers remembered the logos of IBM or Chevrolet, which presented uniquely mind grabbing graphical ideas by compressing their images into extremely sharp messages emulating simple vibes via powerful symbols. Not today, pick up your top 10 companies and try to remember their logos and ask yourself if they really have an impact.

Logos are dead? Hardly. I’d argue that yes indeed, logos still have a very real impact. Think Apple, Windows, Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Fed-Ex. Can anyone honestly argue that the logos of these companies don’t have an impact? These are iconoclastic images and logo legends that have settled into the very hierarchy of society itself. I remember reading somewhere that the Coca-Cola logo is more recognized than the cross as a symbol of ‘something’. Every time Apple rolls out a new look, it sets the visual tone of the marketing landcape for months to come. The constant constant Apple logo lawsuits and legal dustups should give us an idea of the reach of that particular image. The golden arches? Who hasn’t welcomed that sight when feeling a little peckish at 1 am, rolling down the Interstate?

With one million new logos a month being invented by the computer savvy, small business armies of ever growing nations like India and China, only the very naive and the ad industry continues to dream in Technicolor, convinced that customers are memorising the identical circles and lines in twisted colours now called fly-by-night and changed-by-the-day logos. This overly zealous creativity needs to be harnessed as the cut and paste culture and the latest libraries of million logos available for free have shifted the goal posts. This is one of the main reasons where advertising consistently and tragically fails over real marketing of real concepts.

Ouch. Seems like this cat has a true hard-on for logos in general. While I’ll agree that the libraries of embarrassing clip art logos have ‘dumbed down’ some of the design industry – it is only the naive that believe these types of logos are even adequate for a decent company image. Free logo design artwork and clip art has always been available – the Internet just makes it easier to obtain. And while it’s possible to illustrate massively successful companies and their corporate identities with a list (I’ve mentioned a few earlier), I dare anyone to show me one, just one, successful company that uses a logo obtained from these free clip art libraries as their brand. Fire up Google. I’ll wait…

Clearly, there are two schools of thought: logo-driven and name identity-driven… The other school of thought prophesies the new name-economy, in which name brands, as mature identities, skate on e-commerce from one region to another, amidst a highly mobile society that bears a strong understanding of the potential power behind the successful branding of a powerful name.

The other school of thought? I would have thought that we’re all from the same ‘school of thought’. Of course a name is important. Just like an effective logo, the name is part of a successful company identity and image. One doesn’t replace the other. A stupid name can’t be ginned up by a killer logo. And vice versa. And even then, there are exceptions. Google is arguably a stupid name (I dig it, but it’s too clever by half – I’d expect that 95% of the population doesn’t realize that Google actually refers to mathematical number and is a mash-up of the term googol – a 1 followed by one hundred zeros. In real terms, a very big number). Their logo smacks of something thrown together by a programmer in Paint, complete with a bevel filter. And that’s one of the biggest companies in the world. In any case, arguing that only the company name is important seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. I’d argue that it’s a symbiosis of the two. Wonder why the author has an axe to grind towards lowly logo designers?

The writer is an expert in corporate image and global cyber-branding. He is also a syndicated columnist and author of Naming for Power.

Oh.

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