Some would say the problem started with the digitization and consequent low-price proliferation of stock photography, followed soon thereafter by stock illustration.  When online stock photos first came out, photographers were initially in uproar about the sudden drop in worth of their product as stock photography companies began to offer royalty-free subscription services, and eventually pay-as-you-go royalty-free stock photography for ridiculously cheap prices.  Some would still argue that the design industry has suffered at the hands of low-cost stock photography, while others (me included) make the argument that in a capitalist society, the marketplace determines not just supply and demand but also product variation within a given business sector.  What you see now in the stock photography marketplace is a clear quality-to-price ratio when comparing low-cost royalty free stock imagery to higher-cost rights managed stock imagery.  By and large, professional photographers and illustrators can still get top dollar for their work by only submitting their pieces to higher-end stock imagery suppliers.

There is some type of logical boundary between producing, purchasing and using stock photography and doing the same with logos.  Here’s what I’m ranting about: using a stock photo or even a stock illustration is comparable to a carpenter buying a new tool. Sure, it might be a tool that’s so specialized that it can only ever be used on one job, but still—it’s just a tool.  However, when someone buys a stock logo, it’s comparable to calling up a random doctor from the Yellow Pages, and saying to the doctor, “Hey, I gotta fever. And the only prescription—is more cowbell.”  I couldn’t resist.  Actually, it’s like saying to the doctor, “I have a disease which requires a doctor to cure. Please give me a prescription for some medication. You’ll have to guess what my symptoms are, and you won’t see me.  I’ll send you five bucks, and I expect to be fully cured upon the medicine’s delivery.”  You see, a logo is meant to effectively communicate who you are using the visual language.  A designer has no way of knowing who you are—your likes, dislikes, your vision, mission, objectives, your corporate culture, your history and plans for the future, your competitors—unless the designer asks you about these things, or talks to you long enough to get a sense of these things.  When you purchase a stock logo, all of these issues are left to you—someone with presumably no training in the visual language.  Another way to illustrate this is using another medical analogy.  Imagine you have one or two very strange symptoms, say persistent dull headaches that won’t go away, and a tingling sensation in your right ribcage.  You do some research online and find out that it could be one of two life-threatening diseases, or up to 5 non-risky short-term illnesses that don’t need treatment.  The problem is, you’re not a doctor.  You don’t know if the cramp you felt yesterday was another symptom or just bad pizza.  Maybe the pain in your big toe just now is another symptom.  But, instead of going to a doctor to find out what’s going on, you just go to the local Walgreens, stroll through the pharmacists’ medicine supply and pick something that you think will fix you.  You think to yourself, “I googled this extensively, and read the Wikipedia article thoroughly. I know what’s going on, and this is the right medicine for me.”  But you’ve never had any real medical training, so in the end you have no authority to judge what is good or bad for you.  So it is with stock logos.  The untrained consumer only has non-objective insular opinions about what works for them.  Without an expert (a.k.a. Designer), the consumer is lost—whether they know it or not.

My fear with stock logos hitting the market in force is that the world will become inundated with bad design.  Ugly will be everywhere, but like Hershey’s milk chocolate, this new ugly will be so ubiquitous and so universally lauded, that consumers will be fooled into thinking that it’s the best thing ever!  What was that about Hershey’s milk chocolate?  If you look at the source beans and production methods of chocolate on the market today, Hershey’s milk chocolate is an abomination.  But the vast majority of Americans will prefer Hershey’s milk chocolate over something truly great like Green & Blacks or Scharffen Berger because they grew up eating Hershey’s.  Our culture has suffered as a result, and now anything that contains chocolate also contains lots of sugar, flavorings and milk.  I fear that a comparable change will happen in the visual identities of the world’s businesses if stock logos proliferate as much as their purveyors hope they will.  I am not concerned about the design industry itself—the strong will survive and raise their prices to take a higher position in the marketplace.  Weak designers will change professions and great design will become something indicative of a truly great business.  There has never been a better time to be a good designer than in a market nearly overcome by cheap imitations.  If I can educate my readers and my customers to become connoisseurs of good design, I’ll be a happy designer.

Things are pretty busy ’round here, but I found the time tonight to share my thoughts on the modern Christian church and how graphic design is being mishandled, as well as what should be done about it.  Check it out!

BBC Logo

Eric Gill is an interesting figure in history, with his autobiography recalling events which, if true would mean that he was either sexually perverse or insane.  It is also possible, considering his incredible wit, that the sordid events written about in his autobiography never actually occurred, and that he was using his autobiography as a way of pushing the public’s “buttons”.

In any case, we can look at his life, works and perspective on design and learn a great deal.  I’m recounting here several amazing quotes from Gill that can help us see how he thought and operated.

When asked to describe his early artistic motivations,

Eric Gill began to recount the first time he saw his mentor, a true calligrapher, writing.  He described those experiences thusly:

On those occasions I was caught unprepared. I did not know such beauties could exist. I was struck as by lightning, as by a sort of enlightenment. On that evening I was thus rapt. It was no mere dexterity, that transported me; it was as though a secret of heaven were being revealed.

Hopefully we can all relate to that experience, whether it was seeing a beautiful work of art as a child, or seeing a clear rainbow after a summer rain, there is nothing as inspiring as beauty.

On comparing typography to other forms of art:

Moreover it is a precise art. You don’t draw an “A” and then stand back and say: “there, that gives you a good idea of an ‘A’ as seen through an autumn mist”, or: “that’s not a real ‘A’ but gives you a good effect of one.” Letters are things, not pictures of things.

This is a fascinating take on what makes typography stand apart. When we view a painting or a sculpture, we are looking at a depiction of something else, whereas with typography and in an abstract way, photography as well, we are looking at the actual thing – not a depiction of something. But what happens when we add imagery to a typeface? What about old illuminated manuscripts, wherein letters were often embellished to appear like a person or something from nature?

In his later business life, Eric successfully broke into the world of architectural drawing, carvings and inscriptions. Historically, these things were all done by the architect working on the building in question, but Eric began to gain the trust of architects, and would remove this part of their workload from them.

One secret to his success:

My chief claim was that I could relieve the architect of the necessity of supplying drawings in connection with one craft at least. But such a claim depended upon my ability to give them something better than they could get otherwise. Therefore I had to profess to “know” — and to know better than they did themselves.

This is the task of all designers, and in fact, any business seeking to provide a good or service that the customer could potentially provide themselves. I have been asked before, “Why should I pay you to develop a website for me, when I can get a free one included with my GoDaddy hosting plan?” Or, “Why should I hire you to create a custom logo for me, when I can use a Microsoft Word template and do it for free?” We must be true experts, we must truly know more than our clientele about what makes a design work, and how to communicate visually. We must be completely fluent in the visual language. That is the key to success as a designer: the ability to understand and communicate in the visual language of line, shape, color, contrast, movement, structure, form, purpose, and so forth. But just as important as commanding the visual language, we have to be good with verbal language — we have to help our clientele understand why they should hire us and not go it alone. We have to “know” better than they do, and we have to communicate that knowledge.

What is Good Lettering?

And what was fine lettering? It was in the first place rational lettering; it was exactly the opposite of “fancy” lettering. That was the new idea, the explosive notion, and, you might say, the secret. For the world thinks that art and reason are complete opposites, that the artist is the irrational person and all his works the product of caprice and emotional temperament. Art dealers, art critics and artists themselves have more or less consciously conspired to preserve the fiction. Thus art becomes mysterious and a false glamour surrounds it — and better prices.
And what applied to the “fine” arts applied to all the others. As soon a thing was given the title of “artistic” it was supposed to be a work of fancy, and irrational. Artistic lettering meant lettering in which legibility was sacrificed to something called beauty — beauty, “the beautiful”, that which tickles your fancy.
On the other hand, following Morris, following Ruskin, following the universal practice of the world, we were in revolt against the whole conception of art as being irrational.
What is good lettering? That was the job before me. And at every point a justification must be found in reason. Of course we weren’t teetotalers about fancy work, but it must be kept subordinate, and even fancy work should grow out of legitimate occasion. What is decoration but that which is seemly and appropriate?

What is Legibility?

Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.

What a great way to look at it. This is an essential principal for all successful designs. We must not put roadblocks in the way of the audience — this is why website intro movies, and sometimes even Welcome pages are a bad idea. If someone visits your website, they are doing so to see the content that the site holds. They aren’t coming to see a movie about how great you are. They want to know what you think, and how you operate. Unless, of course it’s a movie or television network site. In that case, visitors are coming specifically for video content. This applies to print design as well, in that an otherwise good design can become completely ineffective if it is too far outside the understood norms of the target demographic. Know who you’re designing for; who you’re trying to reach. Operate within what those people expect, while simultaneously pushing the boundaries and expectations just enough to give your design a breath of fresh air. It needs to stand out, but not be conspicuous; it needs to grab attention without being gaudy. We need to set trends without turning away those who would follow our trends.

Nevertheless, seeing the whirl of eccentricity into which modern advertising is driving us, it seems good and reasonable to return to some idea of normality, without denying ourselves the pleasure and amusement of designing all sorts of fancy letters whenever the occasion arises. A man who knows his road can occasionally jump off it, whereas a man who does not know his road can only be on it by accident. So a good clear training in the making of letters will enable a man to indulge more efficiently in fancy and impudence.

On Having Good Design Sense:

Good will seems to be a common possession of mankind, but good sense, i.e. intelligence, critical ability, and that intense concentration upon perfection which is a kind of genius, is not so common. Everybody thinks that he knows an A when he sees it, but only the few extraordinary rational minds can distinguish between a good one and a bad one, or can demonstrate precisely what constitutes A-ness. When is an A not an A? Or when is an R not an R?

On Modern Manufacturing:

So we have the designer who designs what he never makes and the worker who minds the machine which makes what he never designs. And we have the salesman who neither designs things nor minds machines but is supposed to know what the public wants. But the public doesn’t know what it wants, and it has no means of finding out.
My one complaint against machine-made goods is precisely this: that they too often hide their light under a bushel of “design”. Think how decent alarm clocks might be if they were just as plain and well-made outside as they often are inside!
If we insist on the ornamental we are not making the best of our system of manufacture, we are not getting the things that system makes best. The process by which a railway locomotive has become the beautiful thing it now is, this process must be welcomed in all other departments of manufacture. … And ornamental typography is to be avoided no less than ornamental architecture in an industrial civilization.
The truth is that a thing fit for its purpose is necessarily pleasant to use and also beautiful (i.e. seen as being in itself delightful to the understanding). I think an artist is not a person who makes things beautiful, but simply one who deliberately makes things as well as he can — whether he is a clock-maker or picture-painter; because machine-made things are very much better when no “designer” has had anything to do with them — when they are just plain serviceable things. I think that if you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.

After:

A brief, focused history of Mountain Dew’s can designs. I’m not including varieties, such as Code Red, Live Wire, Sport, Diet, promotional designs or extra large designs. The first ever can designed for Mountain Dew, before it was owned by Pepsi:

And, here’s the redesigns of that product package until 2009, again not including the intentional limited-run items.

The above is my all-time favorite, following the original design.

I find it fascinating to view them lined up like this.  You can see a definite progression of the imagery.  One of the immediate things I noticed was the way the logotype becomes more slanted through time.  The first design was very much straight, hand-placed type.  As time went by, the name become more and more slanted until now when it’s probably at a 45 degree angle.  That’s really steep!  I think the second can looks more like a beer can than a soft drink can.

My favorite has to be the original design. I love how it directly references it’s moonshine heritage.  For those who don’t know, “Mountain Dew” originally was a slang term for illegally-distilled alcohol, also known as “Moonshine” that was created in the mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia.  The original Mountain Dew softdrink was created by two bar keepers as a beer chaser and moonshine mixture to sweeten mixed drinks.

The designs definitely got boring during the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s.  It seems that during the 1990′s, Pepsico started to target a younger audience with some intentionality, which can be seen in my love of the can that I mentioned above.  That can design gives me good memories, directly associated with good design and a good product.  Will the new design be able to elicit the same reaction from today’s clientele?  That remains to be seen, but I would guess the answer is no.

I say, “Good job, Tropicana!” It’s nice to see a large brand be willing to backtrack and listen to consumers.  If only their parent company, Pepsico would follow their lead and go back to the old Pepsi logo!

What’s disturbing about this is that Tropicana’s corporate culture was so dense that this terrible design got through in the first place!  How many people along the way hated the new brand, but couldn’t say anything to their boss for fear of getting fired?  That’s frightening.  And how many people lied about the new brand by claiming that it was a good redesign?

So, I suppose this is a big day for bloggers everywhere – our collective efforts and freely shared opinions actually made a difference!  We can rest assured that our orange juice will once again look as good as it tastes.  God bless us every one.

Here’s a link to the New York Times article

And in case you missed it, here’s the article I wrote about the new design.

Take, for instance the United Parcel Service (UPS) logo:

UPS Logo - Old and New

The old logo, designed by Paul Rand was actually amazing.  It’s actually quite a bit stronger than the new logo, but the change to the new logo was the right move to make.  UPS successfully grew it’s “UPS” brand to be a globally recognized force.  It’s rare to hear someone call the company “United Parcel Service”; rather, everyone instantly equates “UPS” to package delivery.  The old logo was a big part of making that happen, with the symbolism of a package at the top and a shield on the bottom, combining the ideas of parcel, strength and safety.  As the company came into the new century, their customer base had grown younger, more modern, and more demanding.  In addition, UPS no longer had to “spell out” the parcel nature of the business.  Therefore, the shift away from depicting a package, and more toward a modern interpretation of a shield was an excellent choice.  The new logo is a perfect example of a design realign – it kept the “soul” of the original identity, but got rid of extraneous elements.

Here’s a link to the article that got me thinking about this:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/redesignrealign

My one disagreement with the List Apart article is that I think there are more times where a redesign is necessary than Mr. Moll gives credit for.  There are internal company issues that can be helped by a redesign.  Often a company can become mired in sundry ruts, from the way employees view the company, to the way customer support treats their employess, and often a corporate identity redesign can help everyone in the company to get jolted out of those ruts.  Therefore, often times a redesign benefits the company in ways other than attracting new clientele or better serving the current customer base.

However, it remains a good question to ask, and a good reminder to all of us designers – don’t jump the gun to a full redesign!  It will require more planning and work, but it could be that a realignment will better serve your clients.

One of the best package designs ever.  The eye is moved through the whole design quickly and easily – on purpose.  You see, the human eye first goes to the bottom left of an object, so you need some type of diagonal element to move your eye from the bottom left to the to right.  The old Tropicana carton did that beautifully with the round orange, and note the green leaves poking toward the bottom left of the carton, where your eye can “use” them to get into the design.  The dark gradient in the middle of the orange perfectly and forcefully moves your eye across the orange’s surface to the straw, with the perfectly illustrated drop of juice – or is it water? – then up the straw, where your eye meets the curved Tropicana logo, bringing you around full circle to the top left of the design, where you then move along the left edge of the orange back to the bottom left, where you started.  That’s when you notice the “100% Pure & Natural Orange Juice” badge, as well as the superfluous data at the bottom.  However, before you move on, notice the relationship between the logo and the “100% Pure & Natural” typefaces.  The logo uses a soft, curved, slightly tropical, sensual, organic type while the lower badge uses a small-caps serif typeface to balance the logo with a touch of seriousness, even majesty.

Other notes on this would include the wonderful pairing of orange and green and the way the vertical orange stripe bisects the design, yet implies a sort of award ribbon – though only subconsiously.

Now on to the new design, which came out only a year or so after the above design was released.  Here it is, in all it’s new fangled glory:

So, a few things are evident here.  Number 1 is that Pepsi, and by extension Tropicana, has an affinity for mid-90′s british design, when geometric sans serifs were used alot. Except they used them well.  Second is that Tropicana was tired of having a logo!  “Hey, let’s not have a logo.  Everybody else has a logo.  Let’s just use our regular text font, and stick that little leaf thing above it!”  Third, Tropicana doesn’t want to be associated with tropical anymore.  Tropic does not equal Tropicana.  It’s now Tropican’t.  Ha.  Haha.

Now, you can see that they tried to move your eye up the design again, from the bottom left to the top right, but the execution has several flaws.  First, the darker color is on the left, which makes the left side visually “heavier”, which in turn can make your eye get caught in a perpetual roundabout on the left side of the carton, especially when viewed straight on, instead of the above 3/4 view. Plus, the curve of the orange glass leads up to the top edge of the carton, instead of curving your eye back into the design! That’s not good.

There’s no clear focal point in this design.  The size of the white “100% Orange” competes with the logo, which competes with the “squeezed from fresh oranges” bit.

All in all, this new design looks like a supermarket discount store brand.  Or maybe a Target Market Pantry item from 5 years ago.  Oh, and I love what they did with the bottle cap.  I can hear the executives now, “We need to do something with our cap!” “I know! Let’s take the old one and put an orange boob on the top of it!”  “That’s genius!”

In case you haven’t checked the blog in a while, check out the post I did on the new Pepsi logo

Keep going, Pepsi – at this rate, you’ll be giving the design blogosphere fodder for a decade!

Oh, and I have to give mad props to the folks over at Under Consideration, and specifically their blog, Brand New for pointing this out, as well as the new Pepsi logos.  They get behind-the-scenes news about this stuff way before it hits the shelves.

You’ve probably noticed at your local grocery store or gas station that Pepsico has come out with a new corporate identity.  It’s clearly an attempt at an evolutionary (vs. revolutionary) change, with a similar color palette and predominantly blue background on the flagship product, Pepsi.  I think it’s a bad identity.  Find out why after the jump.

A logo refresh, and certainly a new corporate identity should push a company forward into it’s growing vision.  Branding should reflect where a company will be in ten years, and if properly done, will propel the company into that vision.  It should never be done to fit in better with “the crowd” or to better adhere to a current design trend.  Here’s the first thing that pops into most people’s minds when they view these:

“So Pepsi voted for Obama?”  At which point the Pepsi executives would say, “No, that’s not the Obama logo – it’s a stylized smiley face!  Isn’t that fun?”  Well, it sure doesn’t look like a smile to me, and I’m all about symbolism and implied meanings.  It looks like a bad print job of the old Pepsi logo.

There’s a lot that’s bad about this, from the nauseating “e” in “pepsi”, to the clinical, cold layout, to the fact that it looks like the packaging for an mp3 player more than a food product.  Plus, the logo changes depending on the drink!  Come on, guys!  That aspect seems to have been an afterthought, since with the pepsi max can, the logo has a much larger “grin”, depicting the higher caffeine amount in the drink, but the rest of the pepsi max can is bland, boring, grey, clinical and sterile.  If you’re going to change the logo to depict a more exciting customer experience, you have to follow through with the entire package – which they have not done.

This new look seeks to set itself apart from the competition, which it does indeed.  I’ll give them that: they stick out like a sore thumb, or like a medical appliance in the frozen foods section.

Feel free to comment, especially if you disagree with me.  I know there are mixed opinions on this out there.

I had fun with this one!  You can see a detailed description of the design process in my portfolio.  I wanted to tie together the current fascination with Battlestar Galactica’s remake on the Sci Fi Channel and the still-raging retro futuristic design trend.  Obviously, there’s a big James White influence here, though I used a different technique to actual create the design than James uses.  The target audience is college students at local universities.  The church that commisioned me is an inner-city postmodern church that’s growing fast with the college students it’s dedicated to reaching.

I thought this was the perfect project to again use the retro futuristic look, and I had lots of creative freedom to come up with a fitting theme.

No doubt America has seen the power of good branding this year.

Branding Obama from Grupo Ubica on Vimeo.

And here’s an article showing the rejected designs leading up to the final Obama identity:

Obama logos