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Absurd Intellectual

… since 'aught-eight.

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You know what, the heck with logos

by Grant Hamilton

Let’s say you’re not a very good capitalist consumer. Let’s say you didn’t score very well on the logo recognition test.

Perhaps you even hold that as a point of pride. Perhaps, you say, it is just that you “place all such capitalist icons into their proper perspective (i.e. into the banal, derivative, generic, and irrelevant categories).”

That’s excellent. As a person who was just the right age to have Naomi Klein’s No Logo make a gigantic impression on me,* I am completely sympathetic.

That’s why I think you might be interested in this (ahem) product:

It’s the brainchild of one Jeffrey Crouse, and with about a month to go, he only needs about $1,100 in donations to get it up and running.

Do I love it? Yes. Do I think it’s perfect? No.

I would prefer to be able to download it as a filter, say, for Final Cut or iMovie or something. I think his idea of an uploadable server is interesting and cool, but far too single-point-of-failure for me.

Still, I keep thinking about a trip that Amy and I took to Cuba a couple of years ago, when we were surrounded by LITERAL PROPAGANDA everywhere we turned, and all we could think of was what a nice relief it was to not have our brains assaulted by advertising at every juncture. Now that’s a vacation.

(via BoingBoing)

____________

* One of the worst side-effects of 9/11, in my opinion, was the way it completely derailed all the wonderful youth protest movements that were just getting started.

Tags: awesome, branding, corporate skulduggery, i want, logo, video

How many logos could you recognize if they were just circles?

by Grant Hamilton

In fairness, some of these logos are a little obscure. But others are very, very common, and I still whiffed on them. I think I got about 20 per cent, at first blush, and mostly those were the logotypes with just their letters and a unique colour scheme. Or Target. Target was easy.

Logo designer Graham Smith has made this an ongoing project. Check out a bunch more circle logos at his Tumblr, called Unevolved Brands, or in the Flickr set.

Tags: cool, graphic design, logo

This is why your brand is so turd-like

by Grant Hamilton

Oddly, by this Venn diagram, my own Horrible Logo actually isn’t shitty!

(From Logo Design Love, by way of Atomic Robot)

Tags: amusing, design, logo

This is my new (horrible) logo

by Grant Hamilton

I spent $5 on it, but I don’t think I’ll keep it. At least shipping was free!

Buy your own at Horrible Logos, or for $10, you can get a high-resolution version sent to you (rather than just waiting to have it posted to the site).

In my experience, the response was quick, the customer service non-existent, and the product exactly as advertised. Thanks Horrible Logos!

(I also, in my “special instructions to seller” told him that I expected my $5 to be spent on a horrible beer. I hope he hates it!)

Tags: amusing, awful, graphic design, horrible, logo

Trompe l’oeil logo

by Amy Breen

It took me a second or two to see it, but once I did, I just kind of sat in awe at the incredible cleverness.

(Reddit via Wired)

Tags: cool, design, logo

So, is ‘LG’ a power-up or a ghost?

by Grant Hamilton

(From here, via here)

Tags: amusing, design, logo

Great gallery of vintage baseball logos

by Grant Hamilton

milwaukee-logo-2

When Amy and I went to Minneapolis the other weekend, we took in a could of Twins games. Since it happened to be interleague, we got to watch them play pound the Milwaukee Brewers. It was sometime in the first few innnings of the first game that we fell in love with the retro Brewers logo above.

I don’t know when they changed to a newer logo, but plenty of people were still wearing the old M+B-in-a-baseball-mitt logo on their T-shirts. It was awesome.

So it was doubly cool to dive into this collection of vintage baseball logos from loads more teams.

It doesn’t include every logo ever — the blogger who compiled it says that he chose only the ones that were “interesting” to him — but there are enough to get a sense of some of the logo evolution.

Three things that I noticed right off the bat:

  1. Many of the logos have evolved dramatically over the years, and sometimes elements get lost that I wish hadn’t.
  2. There are clear “trends” in logo design. A lot of retro logos have rounded single letters that are pretty similar to the Brewers one. And a lot of the modern logos have computer-aided 3-D effects.
  3. The Napster logo appears to have been ripped right off from the old Chicago Cubs logo. Go check for yourself!

I also loved that the Oakland As used to be the “Swingin’ As”.

Credit for unearthing this post to Draplin, who always has fantastic design links.

Tags: awesome, baseball, cool, design, logo

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