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Age of Logo Mark has passed : (

by Jeremy Moseley
Monday, December 20, 2004. 05:05PM
1,592 Views 11 Comments

Designers such as Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Milton Glaser, David Carson, April Greiman, Herman Zaph, Armin Hoffman, Chermayeff & Geismar and Wolfgang Weingart set the foundation for logo marks and brand schemes that would out last the creator’s own existence. These great marks served as a solid backbone for the advertising industry beginning in the 1980s… As time has passes so have the great marks and the designers who made them. The ad agencies have taken over this task of developing marks as part of the overall media plan. The mark in and of it self seems to matter little… its become all message and motion. A big ole blur… representing the fogginess of the brand and its services.

Recently Nextel merged with Sprint. The last campaign before this merger was dubbed only as “Done” the next week this message of getting things done with Nextel service became a joke. Great forethought guys! Sprint and Nextel have no plans to merge the names or the marks. Cingular and AT&T joined up and made a half assed attempt to join the brands by turning the word Cingular blue and appropriating the blue signal bars originally featured on Nokia phones. Sears and Kmart are following the same scheme of separate but together brands… What is going on? Do the companies no longer trust designers to make a mark? Have ad agencies lessened the importance of the logo and brand. Is there just way more money to be made with a 30 second spot that bastardizes Saul Bas’ original vision of the AT&T sea of globes replaced with sea of “Jacks”? Is it all a legal battle where marks cant change? Lets discuss…..

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Comments

 11 shown
Wednesday, December 22, 2004. 12:12PM by LIEM NGUYEN
... are we still talking logos here?
Tuesday, December 21, 2004. 09:52AM by Marc Lefton
Don't laugh, but for a while they thought EXACTLY that. We were working on an email system where you could ship your emails through UPS's secure, 100 billion times better than anyone else's unbreakable servers. Because they thought "Well gee, people are Fed Exing documents because they're sensitive for $20 a pop.." Well, they were wrong. We did a bunch of cutesy ads with like the truck going through a computer wire. It never flew...obviously :) I also worked on DivX and Iridium...talk about my track record with bad products.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004. 09:12AM by Robert Moss
If UPS thinks packages are dated, don’t tell that to Amazon.com. What is UPS going to do? Become an ISP and deliver email? They’re a mechanized army of brown uniformed guys and gals (I think any military references --- intended or not --- are appropriate) who bring me my stuff I order online. But a UPS Shield? A shield is for defense. Has DHL scared the bejezus out of them?
Tuesday, December 21, 2004. 08:30AM by Jeremy Moseley
At the time even the use of brown as a design color in the UPS logo was highly contested. Some people said the color had bad references to Third Reich Army. Paul Rand did many funny things like this. Even the stripes in the IBM logo represented prison characters in his unreleased sketches. But he made up a big story that kept the industry chasing after the speed of stripes for years…. Funny! I read a speech by the CEO when they unveiled the new shield. "Friends Family we gather here tonight to say good bye to an old friend. A friend that has represented us well for years and has played a key role in our success. Tonight we say goodbye to the package and bow for it no longer represents our company’s services. And now I present to you the Shield!"
Tuesday, December 21, 2004. 08:18AM by Marc Lefton
Ha, I thought the same thing about NWA, Rob! There's no reason UPS couldn't have updated itslogo with the yellow gradient and still kept the package ribbon. My only reason for thinking they got rid of it is maybe they felt "packages" were too dated. They used to freak out any time we showed cardboard in a layout idea. AT&T, due to new technology, wouldn't let us use pictures of home phone handsets.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004. 08:11AM by Robert Moss
I can’t say for certain about UPS or NorthWest Airlines, but this kind of thing has more to do with the company and less to do with the ad agency. It’s a variation on *not invented here* syndrome. Only in this strain of the disease, it’s about a new regime wanting to be able to point at something and say, “I did that.” If it’s any consolation, these people tend not to be to great to work with from the agency side either.
From both a personal and professional perspective, I can’t see what advantage the new UPS logo has over its clear and distinctive predecessor. And I cannot look at the new NorthWest Airlines logo without thinking of a certain ‘80s rap act.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004. 07:45AM by Jeremy Moseley
Very interesting info Marc. I appreciate your insider take on all that. I guess it’s a sad state of affairs for graphic design these days. People would rather relate to a yellow AOL running man than have to contemplate some meaning in a logo. People don’t want to think anymore. It’s all: ipods, cellphone video games, fingernail biting distractions tactics to keep us from the insane reality that we can be creative and imaginative if we take a moment to realize our innate ability to conjure original ideas and individual thoughts.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004. 07:15AM by Marc Lefton
I was perplexed by UPS's overall image change, not so much for their logo but their type style and campaign. When I worked on the account (my partner and I almost singlehandedly handled all their print for a year) they refused to change from Bell Gothic for all type, even though it had a minimal difference between regular and bold versions. You could never do a headline that shouted with that font. And this was like, a serious serious fight. They would not let us do anything without this typeface. So, a year after I left, the account switches agencies and all of a sudden they're using nice big bold gothic fonts, change their logo and switch from "Moving at the speed of business" which had such a long legacy for them to the icky "What can brown do for you?"

Anyway, from a personal standpoint, I've never liked logo design. I understand its importance but so few people do that I never feel that I'm being fairly compensated for it. At agencies, I've had even good creative directors scoff at having a branding firm get paid $30K to do one when they claim they could get 10 junior art directors to do it for that. When I've freelanced for small clients, they wanted to pay me petty amounts of money for one, not understanding how this logo is how people perceive them, etc. Now with the crash of graphic design I get offered like $40 to do one. No thanks!
Monday, December 20, 2004. 06:43PM by Jeremy Moseley
what about the arbitrary updating of both the Northwest airlines logo and ups?


Monday, December 20, 2004. 05:37PM by Robert Moss
What do ad agencies have to do with Cingular and AT&T or other companies merging? I don’t think it’s about companies just not trusting designers. Do you think Oracle should keep design elements of PeopleSoft now that they control the company? There comes a time when a brand name and its mark are no longer relevant. Think Oldsmobile.
Monday, December 20, 2004. 05:12PM by Jeremy Moseley

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