>Frankly, objectively speaking, the new logo is much better from a design perspective whether the author likes it or not.
Disagree fam, I think you drank too much of the kool-aid. A logo ought to above all communicate about the brand and now I'm gonna mix up OUP with Apeture Science.
My point is not that you're wrong, but rather that design is firmly in the land of opinion and your staunch 'objectivity' is bankrupt. I hope you didn't pay anyone to acquire that opinion.
> Most people don't know and don't care what makes good graphic design.
But isn't the logo created for most people? Does it matter that, you as a designer, think it's bad if most people don't? I see it like modern fashion shows. I look at them and think the clothes are insane and I would never wear them, but obviously other fashion designers think they look good (I'm guessing?).
I do agree that the logo isn't super practical though, it's too textured and won't scale. I would take it to /r/slavelabour or Fiverr and pay someone to vectorize it and see what they come up with.
> Disagree fam, I think you drank too much of the kool-aid.
Your comment begins with a fallacious statement, which is an ad hominem.
> A logo ought to above all communicate about the brand
It's a 3D scroll stylized as an "O," which obviously stands for "Oxford." Help any?
> and now I'm gonna mix up OUP with Apeture [sic] Science.
The Aperture Science logo is a stylized flat aperture. The OUP logo is a 3D scroll. Hope that helps.
> My point is not that you're wrong,
That's wise, because I am not.
> but rather that design is firmly in the land of opinion
On the contrary, graphic design is an academic discipline based on fundamental principles that ultimately are rooted in mathematics. Without any background or education, what you've done is assume you know things about design which you do not. Please consider Wittgenstein's advice: "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
> and your staunch 'objectivity' is bankrupt.
You've closed your comment with a fallacious statement, which is a straw man.
> If the logo pictured therein represents the mockup he gave to the designer, I hope he'd be prepared to have it entirely modified or discarded. The logo is busy, repetitive, and difficult to digest.
He adresses the quality of the current logo in a comment, in reply to an anonymous commenter who said something along the same lines (but much more rudely).
"Nope, wasn't "implying" that! In fact, a careful read would have indicated the Chowhound logo was NOT created according to this advice. It was, in fact, done by a pro with vast experience, "condensation" or not.
"You clearly have no idea what a graphic designer does"
Well, hmm. Actually, you, like many (though by no means all) graphic designers, have no idea what a graphic designer ought to do. I'll explain:
The function of graphics for commercial use is not to impress graphics people. Its purpose is to set a tone and demarcate a brand for a given market. Chowhound reached nearly a million people and became a nationally-known brand with a marketing budget of exactly zero. A great many people grew emotionally attached to the brand as soon as they came through our door, and identified with it quite strongly.
All along, graphics pros such as yourself denigrated our design (totally their right, of course!). But I'd say the design was awesome....not to impress the likes of you, but to accomplish our goal: to attract and engage a vast number of eaters of a certain stripe. THAT'S what a (good) graphic designer does. A bad designer designs to please other designers."
> I read the "brand guide." It's exactly what I expect from a professional design firm: meaningless noise, carefully typeset.
It's not helping the discussion to disregard an entire profession. Re-read what you wrote; it is _extremely_ heavily biased, angry venting at some corporate construct you've invented.
> at least it had some character, which likely comes from the talent of a real artist.
> "well, I could have done this job myself". And I'm not even a designer.
That's not necessarily a bad thing that a logo is so simple that non-designer can draw it.
But, I do agree that it does look very generic and forgettable.
"Gap first hires someone to design a logo, and it's universally panned by the design community. They then ask the community "if our new logo is so crappy, why not see if you can do better?" Then, the design community bitches at Gap for not hiring someone to design their logo? Does this seem a bit odd to anybody else?"
Designers hate change (most redesigns are going to get panned). But they hate crowdsourcing way more. They were bitching in the first instance because they wanted to keep the old logo, not that they wanted the community to redesign it.
Also, logos for a brick-and-mortar store aren't like logos for a webapp (which a design rookie could do). The logo isn't just going to go on the front of the store, it's going to affect all of the materials in the store — bags/ads/signery/etc are going to be redesigned. Designing a logo as well as the entire branding scheme of the store is vastly different than sticking a cool pic next to a cool font.
> Why is it hard for designers to accept that there are plurality of opinions on the value of design?
Really? As if that doesn't apply to literally every other profession? I certainly don't mean to say that the logo is the end-all solution to a user's experience– that's ridiculous. People can pay $1000, $10k, $100k even and still end up with shitty branding but the point isn't that quality necessarily scales to how much you pay. It's the fact that on the other side is a person providing a dedicated and unique service who is effectively being bet against (1/6) for less than minimum wage.
And unfortunately, yes there are developers who will work for practically nothing. Unsurprisingly, they are quite underrepresented in places like this and on virtually every other plane because the work they can do for that sort of money is just like 99.999% of $5 logos– total garbage. And what kind of a living do you make when all you can make is garbage?
> This is why graphic designers should be kept as far away from projects that create things that must be used by other people and not just admired for their beauty.
> If I need beautiful or creative content for my art gallery, graphic designers are invited.
You're confusing design with art or decoration.
It doesn't make sense, at all, to say that designers should be kept away if you don't even have a correct working definition of design. I'd suggest you do a little bit of research before establishing such a position. You wouldn't dismiss, e.g., an economical model without at least some knowledge about it, right?
Well sorry, but if I'm the client then I will damn well choose whatever design I like. It's not like a logo is only going to be seen by 'trained designers' who can 'appreciate' it.
> This is basically art and design critique by a pedant. "B-b-but their actions don't match their words" is the most uninspired of all criticisms.
You're required to be pedantic if you want to examine something with any rigor. And yes, I'm asking that the designers provide justifications that logically cohere with the logo they are selling.
> A logo is successful if it generates results, not if it is consistent with whatever principles the critic determines a good logo should adhere to.
This is weak. It's a sort of argument to immensity–that if a company is big enough, it can "almost do anything" at all. It's the same argument that Bierut made, and I don't buy it. It's an essentially anti-critical position. One cannot judge a logo by a large company because by sheer weight, they will make that logo stick.
Moreover, I'm not providing the criteria for judgment–I'm pulling them straight from Cooper's mouth.
> is basically the complaint of either unrecognized talent, or the untalented, against the institution for failing to recognize someone whose work follows all the rules, but lacks spirit.
Tu quoque fallacy.
> This, for me, betrays the true roots of this critique -- unexamined appreciation for all things old, and refusal to recognize merit in new interpretations or to, even temporarily, suspend judgment.
This is invalid on its face. Half this essay is devoted to critiquing a logo from 1964.
> The author's own logo fails many of the standards that he holds for these other logos.
"Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. A product or service that is indispensably useful yet looks like ass is infinitely more likely to be successful than a product that solves zero problems but looks like a work of art."
Why do you assume that focusing on design in a startup means that the startup will "solve zero problems"? Admittedly, I'm biased (my startup is in the current batch of The Designer Fund), but the fund is very focused not on "prettiness", but usability and interfaces that work and convert.
I think it's rather unfair that you look at the graphic which is celebrating companies with designers and then rant about design making shitty products. Design is CRUCIAL to a good product, because design isn't "prettiness", it's how people use it and how it works.
Which of those infographic cards would you call shitty? And why?
> But to me large part of professional design is not personal taste but knowing and understanding your target audience and design intent, and design appropriately.
Design where intent doesn't align looks very ugly to me, so that is still a feeling. Things feel right when designed well.
> “Try to be brutally honest with yourself: is the goal actual innovation? Or is really to appear innovative?” I have asked these questions of many senior executives now, assuring them I am not being glib
This type of reaction eats itself. If you're a person who prioritizes "actual innovation," why are you spending so much time complaining about a fucking logo redesign?
> explaining that these objectives are often in fundamental opposition to one another.
No, they're not. Is Apple innovative? Is Google? Both examples of companies who have demonstrated tremendous amount of investment in design updates over the years. Heck, they even created custom fonts for their blog posts.
I totally understand and appreciate design critiques. Aesthetic opinions are valuable in and of themselves. I even happen to agree with the author that the new Oxford Press logo is worse than their old one. But I have to jump off the wagon when this sort of exaggeration shows up.
> A lot of the design problems have been solved already. Questions such ... how to design forms effectively, what makes a good call-to-action
That's what I thought too until I tried to get the homepage of a web site designed. I'm using a popular "run a design contest" site with a higher bracket prize to try to attract good designers. Unfortunately, some of the crap the designers are turning in should be embarrassing for anyone calling themselves a designer :-(
No, design, and especially logo design, is extremely subjective. Don't pretend like it's not.
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