Well ‘ard logos
I’ll come clean here and openly admit that I am a big fan of ‘Old-School’ style logo design. By ‘Old School’ I mean a brand logo with hard, solid geometry and well-defined areas for ink/no ink - an image capable of faithful reproduction in almost any media, with minimal adjustments to the original. Back in the day I used to say that if I can still make out the salient details of a logo after it had been faxed, then it’s a ‘good’ logo.
I suppose these days I could substitute ‘export the logo as a 50-pixel bitmap’ for the fax process (for all our younger readers).
That’s not to say, of course, that the ‘Old-School’ logo should sacrifice elegance for crudeness, quite the reverse, as the challenge is to create an elegant creative solution even if the resulting design should only appear small and in one colour.
Compare this more ‘traditional’ approach to the current wave of the ‘web 2.0′ type logos, and their like, that are prevalent today. Many of these contemporary logo styles appear to be driven by software techniques rather than sound design thinking. By way of an example: the wildfire-like spread of the ‘reflection’ technique that’s now being applied to so many contemporary web graphics.
There’s even a site that generates trendy ‘web 2.0′ style logos - although I should point out that this is intended to be a joke.
Fan that I am of the ‘Old School’ style I do realise that they may not suit all projects, but I believe them to be at least a useful benchmark. Of course I am also aware that there are some instances where a logo is intended almost solely for web/screen use and, therefore, need not adhere to any print-related reprographic issues.
As a ’straw poll’ test of the longevity of these ‘Old-School’ hard styles of logos just quickly think of a few global brands (and I mean the really big established ones), then take a look at their logos to see what I mean.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
couldn’t agree more. Gotta love a strong logo that looks just as good one colour or multi colour.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Yes, that’s a good benchmark of a good design. I’m a huge fan of logo art, I think it’s underestimated because good ones are so deceptively simple.
September 26th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
I could not agree more. It is so difficult to correctly colour match print and web when more than 50% of the logo is gradient and drop shadow.
September 27th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Agreed Davy. I always provide designs that work as black and white and if the client really wants some special effects, those get applied to the old-school type mark. This way the underlying logo is always sound, and any special effects that may go stale after a while can be easily removed.
September 27th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Sound thinking Mike, as mentioned in the post there are certainly situations where effects are useful (mostly web work I find) but, as in the building trade, good foundations are essential.
November 15th, 2006 at 5:29 am
Well said.
I think web companies (the ones behind the reflections and similar fads) are an interesting case. For some of them, their logos will almost never be presented on anything but a monitor. That makes unprintable colors and effects okay for them, the issue is when more mainstream businesses want to pick up on the fad. How do you tell a client their logo can’t look shiny?
November 15th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Good point Joshua,
Heh, I usually find that the technical reasons for not being able to print a ‘new web’ style logo are often lost on most clients, however they always understand when I tell them it may triple the printing costs to attempt matching it on paper.
Mind you, if they ever have to print a nice colour brochure they could find they have to revert to the awful ‘logo in a white box’ syndrome
Cheers.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Hi Davy,
You make great points there. Siemens, Sony and many others come to mind. Many forget that the name of your company should stand out as goddamn obvious!
I designed our own logo myself 7 years ago. I just wonder what you think of it. www.multinet.ie It is hard faced geometry I suppose but does contain a small radial colour gradient in a centre circle. I does look fine in B&W and comes out good on faxes.
Cheers
John