Logo galleries are all the rage in the internet, either in forum format (think the oddly named LogoPond and Logo Sauce) or in blog format (think Logo of the Day). There’s been some discussion in the design community about the percentage of ‘fake company logos’ - it’s not the logo that’s ‘fake’, it’s the company - and whether or not these ‘pretend company’ logos are a measure of a designer’s skill and/or experience.

Some blogs put the percentage of faux company logos at about 60% to 70% (I would say it’s probably higher), and the discussion is being had in “various avenues on the web. Others feel that rather than cranking out ‘fake’ company logos, while still earning their ‘chops’, a designer’s time would be best spent on pro-bono logo projects for local charities. While I’m non-plussed overall (and wouldn’t consider this close to a design ‘controversy’) I think that the idea of presenting pseudo company logo examples does raise some interesting questions.

In The Logo Factory design galleries, there are logos that I positively hate. Loathe. Despise (no, I’m not going to tell). Alas, in a design process that so-closely involves the client, the final logo can sometimes be far removed from the original designer concepts and direction. Such is the nature of the beast when working directly with the end user.

I’d love to take these logos and redesign them into what a consider a better graphic. Unfortunately, we’re stuck. The vast majority of our company logo samples are the actual company logos (there’s a scant few examples in our portfolio where we use rejected designs, but every design that we showcase is an example of a real company, and the result of a real project). To edit them into a version that I like better than the client would be a disservice to them. And whatever input they had. These repurposed designs wouldn’t be examples of how we work with clients through the overall process. It also wouldn’t give potential clients an idea of our problem solving ability, nor give a true barometer of our inter-client skills when tackling company logo design assignments.

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As the economy crumbled around our ears in 2008, many major corporations re-branded in order to reinvent themselves and convince someone, anyone, to purchase their services or products. Over the past year we’ve seen new logos trotted out for Xerox, Anheuser-Busch, Wal-Mart and Best Buy to name but a few. Some have been successful. Others, not so much. The worst logo redesign of the year has to go the new workup for Capital One - a makeover that displayed such a lack of imagination, understanding and branding that it led us to ask WTF were they thinking? when the design was first announced.

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This gem graced the cover of Conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism. And while it’s not a logo in the absolute purist terms, it’s still close enough, and dumb enough, to be named the Dumbest Logo Of 2008. How come, you might ask? Well, there’s the idea that folks on the political left are fascists. That’s dumb. Fascism is a political ideology that trends towards the right. Then there’s the idea that the smiley face somehow represents liberals. Which it doesn’t. So that’s dumb too.

The smiley design can be traced back to some cat called Harvey Ball, a commercial artist in Worcester, Massachusetts who created the face in 1963 for an insurance firm that wanted an internal campaign to improve employee morale. Franklin Loufrani, one of the people who claim to have designed the ubiquitous mark, has marketed the logo since the 1970s through his company Smiley World and owns the rights to the logo in over 80 countries. The smiley face logo was also used for years by Wal-Mart (hardly a darling of the left) until their attempts to trademark the iconoclastic character blew up in their face and they began a chain-wide phase out. In fact, nothing in the smiley face logo connects it with anything ‘liberal’ at all. And if that wasn’t dumb enough, Goldberg’s book features the logo with a scribbled Hitler mustache. Liberals. Hitler. Smiley Face. Dumb.

And heads explode over the internet. While I’ve never been a huge fan of Logoworks’s back alley logo contest model (here’s how it works), my position and criticism has usually been from a designer position. That criticism remains and I still think Logoworks ‘hides’ their true nature - a network of remote freelancers - from their clientele (though so-called design crowdsourcing and logo design contest sites are starting to make LWs designer network Arteis look positively altruistic by comparison). Granted, there was a nasty bout of plagiarized logos from a few years back (including some of ours) resulting in a month long internet-wide skirmish which certainly made for entertaining reading. That issue seems to have long since died down. According to company spokespeople, that issue has been cleaned up and admittedly there’s been nary a peep about copied logos since.

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There’s tons of logo and design themed blogs on the interwebs. Some are merely promotional fronts, pushing this or that company into the search engine stream. Others are very good, extolling design tips, views and opinions that are always worth a read. It’s a tough call, but the blog that shows the most, well, love for logos and all things design, is UK-based David Airey’s Logo Design Love.

He could probably win for the most aptly named blog as well, as every post (as well as his well-traveled comments section) displays a enthusiasm for logo design and designers that I find truly remarkable and uplifting (unlike the bitterness and cynicism you’re likely to find at my humble effort). David puts a lot of love into every word, and deserves his large (and growing) readership. As David is now located in my home country - Northern Ireland - and if I drank Guiness, I’d hoist a pint, but as I don’t, my cup of morning coffee is going to have to suffice.

Keep up the exceptionally good work David.

Oh sure, the idea was awesome. A Hip Hop concert held in Dallas, featuring local hip hop acts, sponsored by local radio station KBFB 97.9 The Beat and promising city luminaries and celebrities. The purpose of the concert was to educate the young about HIV realities, and boasted a really cool idea - ‘testing for tickets’ - where anyone who submitted to an AIDs test received free admission to the show. The gig needed a logo which we’ve featured above. Let’s critique. - phallic Hip Hop microphone forming the letter ‘I’ in hip? Check. Squeeze in an AIDS awareness ribbon? Check. Teeny weeny silhouette of the Dallas city skyline. Check. Let people know it’s annual? Check. Now, we need some street cred using yer typical gangsta rap violence imagery, which is cool, because any designer worth their salt knows the best way to brand something to do with AIDS and HIV is to surround the logo with Dexteresque, Friday-The-13th-ish, blood-spatter and gore. It is the only way…

Hap tip - The Dallas Observer.