What hideously ugly running shoes can teach us about logo design.
A couple of weekends ago, the Mrs. dragged me along to a sporting goods warehouse sale. Put on by a major manufacturer, the aircraft hanger sized building featured all sorts of discounted gear – track suits, ski coats, snowboarding outfits and aisle after aisle of sneakers and running shoes. With summer fast approaching, figured I was in the market for a new pair, so I tagged along.
Wasn’t long before I stumbled onto these babies – a pair of oddly and loudly colored runners that are so circus-like, we’ve since labeled them my ‘Clown Shoes’. For me, it was love at first sight. Neon bloody green. With fluorescent red accents. Dots and shiny accents. Who couldn’t love these puppies? My wife for starters. My kids for seconders. And apparently Reebok (a subsidiary of Adidas), the manufacturer, who had seen fit to put them on sale for less than 40% of their original sticker price. Didn’t matter. These shoes screamed ‘must have’. And have them I do.
What’s this got to do with logo design and what have you? Easy. There’s lots of times when designers harp on this or that logo because we think it’s ugly. Or visually nasty. We’ve all seen the blog posts. I’ve probably been guilty of writing a few. But see, none of this really matters in the long haul. Because it’s not our logo. Somewhere there’s someone who believes their design atrocity is the bee’s knees. Or someone who’s wife thinks her husband’s awful new logo is the cat’s whiskers. Or some designer who thinks they’re knocked it out of the park with an overdone hatchet job. Who are we to judge? Just as who are people to judge my new clown shoes, though according to the looks I get at the mall, that’s quite a few.
I guess this is the design version of a ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder‘ parable. In the case of my new running shoes, I’m thinking that beholder would be me, and I’m pretty well on my own. But. I. Don’t. Care. That’s probably how people with ugly logos see it too.
And I can’t really blame them.
[picture after the jump].
This is a a series of random photographs captured on my Apple iPhone during my travels. There are three self-imposed rules: 1) the photo has to be taken with my iPhone, 2) the photo has to be published ‘as is’ without any cropping or editing and 3) no Photoshop tinkering other than lighten, contrast and sharpen.
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