Typophile - I hate this logo - Comments

My boss is the wife of the

Ricardo Cordoba — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 01:39:05 -0800

My boss is the wife of the company founder.

You will never get this person to change her mind... Start looking for a new job. You will be much happier afterwards, believe me.

[EDIT] She drew the logo and is very possessive of it.

That alone should tell you something... Choose your battles.

I think this is your best

logosam — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:48:06 -0800

I think this is your best chance. Update the mark with a sports/internet/mountainbike face like beast machines, or gunship, or cyborg 45. keep the fish – which is good and does have some equity, and put a mountain bike tire behind it to make it topical.
It’s just an update and no-one’s ego has to get bruised.

Heh, thanks Eben. It’s

eeblet — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:28:02 -0800

Heh, thanks Eben. It’s really good to be back - there are so many great designers here, it’s like being in art school. (And it’s more fun than online scrabble.)

—-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeblet/
Live in the Bay Area? Coming soon: screamsorbet.com

Nice to see you back on

Eben Sorkin — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:26:53 -0800

Nice to see you back on typophile Beth!

Nice fish, mean fish Red

eeblet — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:46:01 -0800

Nice fish, mean fish
Red fish, green fish

I would not put it on a box
I would not change it to a fox
I would not put it on a shirt
I would cover it with dirt

That said - you did a nice job at polishing a petrified turd.

One suggestion is that you do some user testing - but some students lunch, show them the fish and ask them to write adjectives they think of. Or something like that. Get the owners to sign off on it first - it might show them the light.

Good luck!

adnix - Thanks for the

LogoMotives — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 19:49:18 -0800

adnix - Thanks for the mention of my book (Your post just showed up in a Google search!) - J.

Jeff Fisher | Engineer of Creative Identity | Jeff Fisher LogoMotives

“evidence being that very

aluminum — Tue, 8 Jan 2008 06:52:30 -0800

“evidence being that very few people buy any of our branded merchandise”

Well, that’s certainly some interesting data that helps make your case.

That we can’t afford to

gillo — Tue, 8 Jan 2008 00:08:40 -0800

That we can’t afford to throw away all of our “built up equity” is essentially what my boss tells me whenever I try to mess with the logo. I usually don’t push the issue, though because I have a feeling the real issue has more to do with her pride in little fishy. I can’t believe that that fish has built up that much equity anyway; the company started in 2003 or so, and by the time I got there they’d adopted the ugly fish for some materials, but the top of their website still had an entirely different fish and typeface combo. Some of our shipping pouches had that old fish combo until at least a month or so ago. I can hardly believe that most of our customers identify with the fish in any meaningful way (evidence being that very few people buy any of our branded merchandise), or wouldn’t recognize the company if it adopted another fish. But I don’t have any sort of marketing or branding credentials, so any discussion would end up: “well I think this” “Well I think you’re wrong,” and she, being the boss, would end the conversation, and I, being rather non-confrontational, would drop the issue, and then at some point, after having kept all my opinions bottled up inside, would become frustrated and start ranting in a somewhat obscure forum on a typography website that I had come across while trying to find legitimate excuse for why we should not use the font “AddCityBoy” to represent our company, but that I had also come across in the past, and had bookmarked in my del.icio.us links, and had enjoyed reading very much, expanding my meager knowledge of typography, and in which I would be comforted by the good citizens (netizens?), by their reassuring disapproval of that which had caused my frustrations.

Really, I’m hoping to be doing some graduate studies in in the Fall, so I just have to hold out until then. I don’t see them changing the logo any time soon, but perhaps if they can stay afloat despite the logo, someday they will become big enough to hire a consultant who will have the authority to tell them how ugly their logo is. Of course, by that time it probably will have gained some equity, but I’ll be long gone by then, so won’t have to worry about it!

@dunk I like to think that my Fine Arts extends to a modest degree toward illustration, but I acknowledge my shortcoming as a designer. That said, I think (and I think she agrees) my graphics are much nicer than those of my boss. And getting better all the time! Slowly, but surely...

I’ve got a similar issue

Scott Leyes — Mon, 7 Jan 2008 18:13:22 -0800

I’ve got a similar issue where I work — not that I hate the existing logo, but i know it could be so much better (given that we are a creative firm), and work better in hundreds of ways, but it’s OUR LOGO - our brand is out there, and changing it (even a little) means going against years of built-up equity.

I spend a lot of time working on ways of presenting our logo in a unique way - illustratively, cropping, ghosting, reflecting, etc. etc... makes it seem much fresher without the loss of what it is.

IMHO, the only place a logo NEEDS to be used “as is” is in a trademark application; once it’s set, play with it!

I laughed heartily at this

Eben Sorkin — Mon, 7 Jan 2008 17:53:19 -0800

I laughed heartily at this thread. I am sorry about the situation.

If they want to grow the biz to be the next Dick’s they will need to re-brand. But the if & when & how will probably not be at your choosing.

Keep in mind your reasons for wanting to change it ( it makes me crazy ) is not a legitimate business reason. If it can be shown that there is a good business case they might bite. But MANY a small business stays small because of an inability to separate the personal ( I made that, I am used to it ) from business thinking. And some folks are phobic about this ’marketing stuff’ and just get irrational when confronted.

Listen to Lore she makes sense.

Illustration Class had a

adnix — Mon, 7 Jan 2008 13:54:08 -0800

Illustration Class had a tutorial on a fish logo. In no way am I telling you to copy this logo, it’s just for reference and to show the boss what a cool, edgy fish logo can look like.

Also check out the book Identity Crisis by Jeff Fisher.

David

Shark? Where? I can’t see

lore — Sun, 6 Jan 2008 09:44:58 -0800

Shark? Where? I can’t see a shark.
I just see a fish with bad teeth and an eye problem. And it’s green. So where is the association with sharks? It’s just a fish trying to look intimidating and winking at you at the same time. Come on, it can’t be that difficult to draw a better fish. Have you tried it? I agree with your critics but just shaving it’s not enough, you have to come up with something to replace the existing one, and one your boss won’t have any objections to.
Having said that, it’s clear to me that it’s a taste issue. A lot of people love this kind of grotesque cartoonish stuff. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s their taste and they don’t find anything wrong with that.

So is a crusade worth it? Has your boss shown at least some flexibility or will to make changes (I mean radical changes)? I doubt it. I went through something similar. My boss was incredibly proud of his creation, which everyone else thought was monstrous. Results: I quit. Moved on. No big deal.

Good luck, you have my sympathy.

I wanna see it without the

nerdski — Sat, 5 Jan 2008 19:10:17 -0800

I wanna see it without the black stroke, but it’s come a long way.

Ouch... that really is an

dunk — Sat, 5 Jan 2008 16:37:47 -0800

Ouch... that really is an ugly logo and you have my sympathies.
My own opinion is that it’s never going to work while it has that ugly shark associated with it. Like someone else suggested, trash the cartoon and work on something a little more complimentary to the business, same goes for the font. The whole thing just feels rather cheap. But I guess there’s not a whole lot you can do about it other than feel smug in the knowledge that we all think it looks crap as well. My background was in Fine Art too. Having flicked through more artist friends’ websites than I care to remember I’m not ashamed to tell you with some certainty that studying fine art doesn’t automatically qualify you as a designer! That’s not an insult of your own talents by the way!

…and a fish on a bicycle

jupiterboy — Fri, 4 Jan 2008 14:21:19 -0800

…and a fish on a bicycle is such a classic image.

I hate this logo

gillo — Thu, 3 Jan 2008 07:16:25 -0800

I’ve been working for this company for a year and a half. I hate their logo. I’m really looking for a good reason to prove to my boss that the logo is ugly and that changing it won’t hurt the branding of the company. My boss is the wife of the company founder. She and I both have fine arts educations, not design. She drew the logo and is very possessive of it. I think the fish is ugly and the free font “Addcityboy,” is not only ugly, but impractical as it becomes unreadable at a not-so-small size. Here is a progression of the logo since I have been working here:

a. The official logo when I arrived
b. The alternate logo when I arrived. Used mainly in print.
c. The logo appearing on the homepage when I arrived.
d. My first attempt at shaving some of the crap off the logo
e. The fish would fit nicely with the slant of the letters if only it was flipped over and rotated a bit. That is not allowed. Precious fish must remain unadulterated.
f. I was able to shave off a little more excess.
g. we hired this outside marketing/ecommerce software making company to build us a new website and help us with branding. They made the letters dimensional and then dropped them on to of the flat fish in order to save space which, imo, looks totally awkward. This is how the logo looks now at the to of our website.
h. This is how it will look when the brand new fancy site is launched (if it is launched, the company we hired has been kind of a disappointment). They wanted to update the look by making it more web 2.0, thus the shadows and gradients. How can they say it is more web 2.0 when they’ve removed the lighter yellowish green- arguably the most web 2.0 color on the web?
i. My suggestion for web 2.0 -izing the logo.

Actually, I’d really rather scrap the whole thing. By the way, any guesses at what the company does? In addition to the logo, I think the company name is somewhat inappropriate and misleading, but I’m not going to get into that.

Please tell me if I’m crazy and the logo looks fine, or if I’m right and rethinking the branding strategy might be a good idea.

Thanks