August 3, 2008
What’s your sign?
The singer Prince reinvented himself as a logo. It didn’t wash. He was derisively called ‘The artist formerly known as prince’ or TAFKAP for short - not exactly a promotion from his earlier identity. Nike’s swoosh is still the defining logo standard for the world and it was designed by a student. I looked up to see what she had done recently but apart from the news article where Phil Knight gave her a diamond swoosh ring in appreciation and Nike shares, there isn’t much about her 37 years later. Would be interesting to see what she has done professionally.
Another trend I notice of late is companies taking up the last two seconds of their commercials to sign off with the company brand. Hindustan Lever has changed to Unilever. From the leaf to the multiple-element ‘U’ Does it really make any difference to the consumer as to which company the brand belongs to? When the brand and the company identity are interwoven, like in Virgin and Apple, it does but otherwise I don’t think it matters at all.
Designing a distinctive logo is tough enough today. All the simple shapes are taken. Squares, rectangles, circles and triangles and ovals, the shapes familiar to us are all registered . The + sign belongs to math, Red Cross, Johnson& Johnson and medicine in general. Designers play with colours and graphic elements within these shapes but these logos are invariably complex and less memorable. To get some sense of the difficulty, try registering your name at any of the popular mail services. The quick identities are all gone. It’s easy knowing who was net savvy very early on, because they are the only ones with first names at Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail.
The same problem extends to registering domains. Having a phrase rather than a short name leads to unintended side effects. A Yahoo! was fine to begin with but Squidoo? What does a company like Squidoo do? And who comes up with these names? They all need logos, so I wonder what the briefs are. Would be hilarious sitting in one of them and keeping a straight face when the company sounds as if it is passing gas.