Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Our Logo Looks Like Underpants: A Case Study in Internationalization (2013)

blog.rjmetrics.com

157 pointsfludlight48 comments

This is why I think anyone doing a rebrand, logo change, etc... should forego regular focus group testing and such, and instead get a group of teenage boys.

They will immediately see if your logo is a dick/butt/boobs/swastika/etc... or if your company name can be taken in a "more vulgar manner"

My mom is a strong believer that every expecting parent should poll other kids about names for their baby. She asked her young nephews about potential names when she was pregnant and immediately threw out the ones they made fun of.

Having previously been a teenage boy, I'm not sure there's really any benefit to discarding names that might get made fun of. Having your name mocked is a pretty inconsequential thing, and probably better than being mocked glfor your physical appearance or mannerisms.

If kids want to make fun of somebody, they'll find a way. There's always something.

Right, but a name is one of those things that can actually be decided ahead-of-time; no sense in giving the little shits more ammo with which they could mock your kids.

That is, unless your goal is to "toughen them up" via the "boy named Sue" strategy.

i took this into consideration when choosing my children name but honestly I could mock pretty much every name and if I can do it then teenager with bigger imagination can mock literally any name

I told my CEO, "always have a 14 year old in the room".

One of our proposed logotypes had a two color scheme: first half all blue, second half yellow.

The middle letter of our log was "p".

The p was the transition letter. The top half was yellow.

Eventually I had to point out to the room of marketers, executives, and agency folk that the "p" was peeing on the a that follow.

Sigh.

Good, entertaining read.

>It appears that y-fronts are a uniquely British phenomenon whose popularity doesn’t extend far past their borders.

I don't think you can make that statement after sending a survey only to people in USA and UK. I'm Australian and I definitely see Y-fronts in the original logo.

Edit: I thought I'd add an interesting point. In medicine we include "Y-fronts" in the mnemonic to help us remember the order and direction of structures in the femoral triangle.

https://radiopaedia.org/articles/femoral-triangle-contents-m...

Ha amazing, maybe this guy shouldn't be writing to non-US audiences. Or maybe his next article can be "A Case Study in responding to A Case Study in Internationalization (2013)"

There are more than 2 countries out there, and more than 2 countries that speak english.

I once tried to sell a software library as a product. Bad timing, concept, and execution, so it flopped. The thing I remember most is putting the phrase "slam dunk" in my initial product announcement. I took a lot of flack about that from non-Americans. That wasn't so bad, but I let that very temporary error distract and derail my marketing efforts, and that was a mistake. Personally, I'd have stuck with the underwear logo and put that energy elsewhere.

I have three letters for you if you think this can't happen within your own borders: OGC

Link for reference: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1901656/OGC-unveils-new-log...

Including this gem:

>A spokesman for OGC said: “It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters OGC - and it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spend.”

Can't beat British humor.

Same with TGV in France. The high-speed train logo, when rotated upside-down turned out to be… a snail.

https://yannigroth.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/logo-tgv-esca...

So the TGV is the inverse of a snail. That sends the right message, IMO.

Well, a snail on its back, even slower than a snail.

If you want to laugh at French public transport, the correct unfair stereotype is worker strikes, not slow speeds.

Speaking as an occasional tourist, French intercity trains are pretty damn great. Most have top speeds of 300 km/h (190 mph) or higher and achieve these speeds in normal service. Compared to anything you'll find in US or UK, it's incredible.

Being able to travel between major cities by high speed train makes short journey air travel outdated. Paris to Marseille is 775 km (481 mi) which takes 7.5h to drive on fast motorways, 3–3.5h by high speed train, and just 1.5h to fly... but then add on ~1h of travel to and from airports and ~1h of navigating/waiting at airports; a whole lot of effort (and cost) and it's no faster overall.

Whereas the train has big seats, giant windows with an interesting view, wifi, cellular coverage, 230v power, access to all of your luggage. Spend the whole 3 hours relaxed and arrive right in the centre of town rather than a stupid airport in the middle of nowhere.

Sorry wasn't laughing at French trains which are indeed great. I was just being a pedant that it was a rotation rather than an inverse.

Discussed in 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10499578

And in 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6521138

From their website, looks like they eventually went back to something close to the original design (and which, really, looks even more like underpants now):

https://rjmetrics.com/

Indeed it does.

OK, so I can't help myself. Experts Exchange went from expertsexchange.com to experts-exchange.com, and the old hostname used to redirect. But now expertsexchange.com is for sale ;)

they should run a survey in france and be surprised how respondents answer "slip kangourou"

That's pretty close to a codpiece ;)

And if you scroll down you will see that one of their customers is Me Undies :)

The punny section headers are a treat:

"A Brief Problem"

"Getting to the Bottom of This"

"But Y?"

More inside the article (not sure if the last 2 were intended):

"it’s a bit of a stretch"

"lingering question"

"laundry list"

While from my cultural bias, I cannot see any "Y pants" in the dodecahedron, the logo of Magento BI (next to "Magento" at the upper left corner of

> https://rjmetrics.com/

and also the logo shown in the tweet) looks like - how should I express it - "a hanging male reproductive organ" to me. The four sides of the hexagon surround the region of pubic hair.

I must say that it took me a while to understand that the problematic logo was not the one you refer to. It looks much more like men boxer briefs than the dodecahedron (after all the seam follows the anatomy).

And funny enough their updated main logo on the top left with the extra accents looks exactly like stylized football/soccerball.

> And funny enough their updated main logo on the top left with the extra accents looks exactly like stylized football/soccerball.

Perhaps I studied too much mathematics that I cannot see a truncated icosahedron

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Truncated_icosahe...

which is the typical pattern of a soccer ball

> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Football_Pallo_valmi...

in a docecahedron:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Regular_dodecahed...

:-)

My personal favorite was the 5 1/4 inch floppy disk brand name: Janus

The first time I saw one of these laying on my desk with the first letter "J" covered up...well, I could never unsee it.

One previous employer, an analytics company, had their website's title set to "<Company Name> Analytics". It just so happened that at my browser's default tab width, this title showed up as "<Company Name> Anal..."

Could be much worse:

https://www.boredpanda.com/worst-logo-fails-ever/

I'm pretty sure at least a couple of those were intentional.

I like that the list is interspaced with commercial banners with also logos in them.

Kind of keeps you on the lookout to see which ones are weird and wich ones aren’t.

Ummm... it's not just Internationalization you need to worry about. Sometimes you should look at the logo from all angles. Literally, in the Office of Government Control's case...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1901656/OGC-unveils-new-log...

Story reminds me of Yandex.Browser logo, which looked for many like a woman thongs on a ball: https://hsto.org/getpro/geektimes/post_images/11e/fe1/9bb/11...

Based on the title alone I assumed this was gonna be about Daewoo. Their logo is regularly compared to a pair of tighty whities (TIL they are also known as y-fronts).

http://www.carlogos.org/Car-Logos/Daewoo-logo.html

I grew up in the UK and have never heard of this y front term before, I wonder if it’s regional. I have heard of briefs and tight whiteys. Based on my experience people in the U.K. will take the mickey/piss out of things like this more in general regardless of what it is.

If you grew up in England and your dad wore y-fronts then you'd definitely have heard of the term. I grew up specifically in the south-west of England.

I grew up in the UK and we just called them "pants". Pants are far superior to boxer shorts but totally unfashionable for some reason. Now people wear "boxer briefs" which are like more fashionable pants that look a bit like boxers.

That’s what we called them.

Wait.

"UK schoolchildren sometimes tease each other with insults like “I bet you wear y-fronts.”"

Why is it an insult? I'm wearing it now, and I'm sure it's quite common here (not UK/US).

Because there's an implication of childishness (yes, amongst children), that one might be mollycoddled by one's parents who do not let them move on to more seemingly "adult" underwear such as boxer shorts.

Not exactly a logo, but check out the "Hitler kettle", which was disturbing and funny at the same time.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...

I had a similar reaction the first time I was stuck driving behind a Megabus: https://i.imgur.com/Xpm7vN2.jpg

There's a UK comedian who created a show around trying to get people to view the moustache as Chaplin's instead of Hitler's [0].

[0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/revi...

it looks more like sport bra than underpants

hahahaah, man you're hilarious! You should consider writing comedy blogs! I was chuckling all through out the article

"I bet you wear y-fronts" hahahaha - it is something that I heard a lot growing up in the UK (and for the record, yes..no, I didn't wear them)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com