Paul Rand’s ABC logo is one of his most iconic explorations. While the inner circles are absolutely geometric, the outer circles that define the outer white edges of the letterforms are not. The vertexes on the “a” and “b” are subtly waisted as they curve around finishing the letterforms. This intentional decision allows for greater legibility at smaller sizes. The newly designed, thicker letterforms on the right rendition are perfect circles both inside and out. The negative space that cuts into the “c” almost completely plugs up forcing it to appear more like an “o” at smaller sizes. KIA’s decision to embrace a new identity caused so much confusion that thousands of Google searches for “KN car” ran rampant. Their attempt at utilizing ligatures backfired and rendered the “ia” as a backwards “n.”
The third offender is rather personal for me as I was working full time at Turner Broadcasting within the Turner Sports NBA TV Design group when it occurred. During at least three rounds of firings which helped redirect the corporate budget toward building a new, state of the art food court we witnessed quite a solution to Turner’s needs. Keep in mind these needs were all fueled by the sheer fact that AT&T was courting to buy the entire enchilada. The redirected funds paid Troika big bucks for a logo redesign chock full of new brand design, too. Guess what happened?
No one could read the logo. No one.
Everyone kept saying “is Turner changing it’s name to Tuinei?” The branding campaign that was plastered all over the Turner campus was black and blue both literally and figuratively as we felt that whoever was behind this new “brand” had it out for Ted Turner. The black and blue hidden meaning being black eyes for Ted and his legacy. Nobody messes with Ted. Yes you all know I have bipolar, and Ted does too. When I discovered that Ted also suffers from Lewy Body Dementia, which pushed Robin Williams to suicide, I was stunned to my core. So many folks considered the highest performing levels of genius have terrible mental health challenges their entire lives. My own struggles with bipolar 1 have gotten worse over the years so I can personally attest to this.
Am I being overly critical, almost bordering on cynical?
Nope. It all boils down to the fact that these brands are failing the cardinal rule of brand design: communication. Period. It is the art to communicate which is the art itself. It’s all in the details. When the details are doing what they’re designed to do no one will even notice. It just works. On the other hand when there’s this failure to communicate it’s always obvious to everyone.
The art of designing a well thought out ligature between two characters is dying. The most basic ligatures such as ff, fl, and fi are usually left out, just as I left them out when I typed this sentence. Don’t get me started on seeing inch marks instead of quotes, hyphens instead of em or en dashes, or bullet points so bold all they do is get in the way of communication. The KIA logo has created the opposite connection in its choice of using ligatures joining all three letters into one illegible design. Google Analytics has documented thousands of users searching for “KN” automobiles. If the “I” and “A” didn’t look like a backwards “N” the solution may have worked much better. I experiment with ligatures quite a bit in my personal typographic explorations in Titles.
There’s also a trend in logo design that there should only be one logo with no varying weights depending on usage across platforms of print and digital. I learned about different font weights depending on size back in Graphic Design 101 in the mid-90s. It appears current design schools have forgotten to preach their roots and are more concerned about teaching software when it’s really the hardware, our eyes and brains, that need upgrading. Science has documented that young children have an innate gift for creating a flawless composition. I’ve spent a lifetime of daily observation learning to “see” as clearly as I did as a child.
Two logos exhibit these design sins, and both were released in 2021. I’ve waitied a couple of years to not only see what the public thinks, but I really wanted to see if I would change my mind and eventually be swayed by their design eccentricities disguised cleverly as design-speak jargon. I’m still not convinced that these design upgrades were introduced with a perfection of design prose as to seemingly make excuses disguised as the very reasons they decided to use poor judgement. I guess they didn’t think other graphic designers would notice. It appears that these two logos are apparently offensive, and illegible, to the masses, not just design masters, of which I am not myself. I am schooled in design dating back many decades, but I am so thankful that I was taught the principles of design before we ever even opened Photoshop or Illustrator which back in those times there were no layers in Photoshop and I think Illustrator was version 5. Am I a dinosaur? To some, but wisdom comes, if we’re lucky, not only through study, but also by making plenty of the same mistakes myself time and again until my eyes can finally “see” allowing me to produce a solution that does what all graphic design aspires to: to communicate above all else.
Illegibility has become a trend. Why? These designers haven’t made enough mistakes and learned to really “see” the correct solution when it naturally presents itself. Also so many logo “refreshes” are boiled down to two easy ways to make a buck: 1) change the logo back to the version from 40 years ago, changing nothing but the color by a suble hue shift, and 2) tweak one or two curves in Illustrator and show how masterfully the logo has been “released” from its own internal design flaw. Yes, they play the hero, but that’s really not the point. So much corporate level design jargon gets thrown around distilling the language down so much that it sounds like a bad “Mad Libs.”
Why am I discussing this here? What agenda am I conspiring? None, really. I just hope all of us try to remember our roots the next time we’re attempting to “refresh” another brand. Design foundation study will always be the most crucial part of the process. Wielding design language doesn’t give an agency the right to attempt a rebrand to begin with. Instead of “why not?” we need to ask ourselves who, what, when, where, why, and most importantly, how. Cicero would most heartfully agree.
“Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.”