The most overused logos, at the moment
gtgraphics.org
gtgraphics.org
https://web.archive.org/web/20140625100152/http://www.gtgrap...
He had to buy a sign to put above his shop. The sign maker asked him if he wanted to put a logo on the sign, too.
"Why?" asked my grandfather.
"So people will recognize your business," said the sign maker.
"That's what the name is for," answered grandfather.
Even at the time I thought this was an interesting perspective.
I always remember that day because afterward when the sign maker left the next person to come into the tanning store was a woman from a nearby dessert shop who gave us free ice cream cones.
Unrelated to logo design, that woman later married my uncle!
More than logos, you need consistent and recognisable look and feel to an advert. This way the companies presence is communicated at a glace, which is what most people offer to digital ads.
Historically, low-quality art and design was a good (though certainly not conclusive) indicator of a low quality product.
These days, every fly by night business can have a slick logo, every shovelware game can gleam in stills thanks to the underlying engine and every inane YouTuber has a pre-roll that could pass for a major studio.
All at once barriers to entrance are lower, reach is wider and and filtering becomes much harder. Social networks and learning/recommendation features feel like logical if not simply necessary conclusions in response.
For example, I want an equivalent of "TV channels" with varied programming for, say, Netflix, and while YouTube does have channels, it's not easy for myself to discover them (it takes a lot of time and there's no easy branding to ease the discovery process).
Edit: I agree that most of those logos do look pretty good. And things like Bootstrap have lowered the barrier needed for a website to look professional. Both are good things, but make using old heuristics for filtering ineffective :)
These cookie-cutter logos are churned out in "design competitions" where designers have social proof of what people actually buy and/or their peers upvote to base their designs on. The conclusion is that using the last set of successful designs as a template is far more likely to be chosen than anything genuinely original (as well as quicker to knock out when you're not being paid by the hour and the tools you have at your disposal are very conducive to tweaking). See also the dominance of the "ten reasons why this Buzzfeed article will grab more attention than your thoroughly-researched article" school of churnalism. Ultimately, lowering the barriers to becoming a gatekeeper or influencer has a far worse effect on quality than lowering the barriers to producing something vaguely competent, and both flood the market with mediocrity.
On the flip-side, many well known companies spend millions on rebranding and get similarly generic logos, and ten years ago the people commissioning most of these would probably have wound up with something involving clipart.
As a logo designer, I'm surprised at how much I think this is true but don't actually observe it much. It does happen, but the majority of businesses still seem to pay for worse logos than they deserve, and the majority of come-and-go businesses also fall into that grouping nicely.
I'm learning, BTW, that even the website experience is a good gauge (well, better than a logo in significant ways) of the quality of the brand.
Once your company is employing a hundred people, turning over 8 figures then you can afford a rebranding exercise. Before that it's so much procrastination and mental wank.
You live and breathe your company's essence - if that's not what you want, try therapy not logos.
However, it must have taken some time to gather that and is an impressive overview. More power to them.
I don't think the logos in this article have anything specifically American in them, it's just the reuse culture. First time you see a logo of a real estate agnecy with a nice abstract roof you say "wow, this is cool". In the US it means it will be copied a thousand times until it starts annoying everyone. Then it's time for a new "wow" idea.
If you do the same with your logo, it will be super memorable and recognizable. Think about all the best ones -- Nike, Apple, Mcdonalds. The reddit logo and HN's "Y" follow that rule too.
It's purpose is not to be unique but to be rememberable.
That's all that really matters (and of course not offending people)
These logos may not be unique, but I do instantly know "Oh this is a law firm" or "Ah, they sell houses".
These are local businesses with no intention of global recognition, and using a basic template helps convey what they do at just a glance.
Just to name a few, the logos for Apple, IBM, Coca-Cola, UPS, Nike, BMW, Shell, McDonalds, and GE give no clues as to what the company does.
Others think it's better to have a descriptive name and logo.
The first approach has the disadvantage of requiring more branding, while the second has the disadvantage of being less distinctive.
I think that the first approach works best if you have a marketing budget and plan to grow, while the second is much better for local businesses or lifestyle or niche businesses where organic search matters more.
VC-backed startups will probably do better with the first route, while bootstrapped side projects might work better with the second approach?
http://blog.asmartbear.com/naming-startup.html
And on naming his company (Smart Bear):
> In the end, I’ve never heard a founder of a successful company say the name of the company was an important factor in its success; similarly I’ve not heard of a name being the fatal blow. (emphasis original)
Solid, common-sense advice, and one reason I qualified what I said to "existing companies". For a new one, it doesn't really matter. But for Nike, it really is important to them that their name isn't descriptive.
You're talking about the exceptions -- global billion dollar brands. These aren't that.
This took me about 20 seconds, and I don't work in design. They all seem very obvious to me. I actually think most small businesses are pretty focused compared to tech startups.
A name with an arc through the name. What's the design purpose? Because most of them look a bit like the name has been crossed out.
I could understand it if the arcs were behind the name - that would mean the name is kind of hovering over a sphere. But lots of the examples show the name behind that arc.
EDIT: one of the later categories is "Use of the font 'satisfaction'". I looked and thought that some of the names were using a different font, because I was sure that Altus was Atlus (even though Atlus isn't a word). So I guess that design really fails? (I misread some others - "street bitch"; "sleet your bed". I don't have any reading problem that I'm aware of. I am a bit tired. But how would someone guard against that kind of problem with their logo?)
Complaining about use of spheres seems a tad harsh - there aren't many solids and spheres are less distracting than most others.
I think the arc is the Earth.
You want something recognizable and unique, represents your brand and message... at all pixel sizes, in greyscale and color, etc. How will this look printed on letterhead? How about in an email signature? What about stretched out for a banner on our building? Is it too similar to someone else's?
With all that said, -- the logos in the article are all pretty generic "safe" logos for more "corporate-like" businesses... which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Oh hey, Khan Academy!