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Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

weblog.muledesign.com

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Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#91

Post by prawn »

proexploit wrote: post #90
prawn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not pretentious, it's just what happens with a big budget rebrand. I don't know if I can explain my take on all this that well, but I'll try: You can either do something at one level, playing off gut-feel/fairly safe assumptions and get it 80% right, or spend 10 times as much, do research and maybe get it 95% right. That said, in an argument, designers will talk about all those lovely theoretical things they wer…

I think it's inaccurate to say most designer's work process is to "just sit down and muck around with fonts, shapes, etc until they have something that fits the bill". Of course design is a process but all those "lovely theoretical things" tell you where to start. If you're quoting by rolling the dice, you're not quoting effectively.

I don't want to truly trivialise it, but I imagine a lot of it is brainstorming, thinking, and gut feel than direct conversations with customers, market research, etc.

And I have to disagree on the dice. The best situation is a client giving me their budget and me telling them the best way to spend it (often, not all of it). So, when the budget is not disclosed, instead of spending hours trying to guess their pricepoint, I just randomise the approach and then fill that budgeted time in the best way possible.

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#92

Post by fretlessjazz »

I'm not a design genius-- but when I saw Gap's new logo I think I knew what they were going for, and imho I doubt it was created haphazardly. The new logo is exemplary of the transition of "best practice" design principles from print to electronic media.

They unabashedly violated two rules of logo and print media design, and it's so blatant that I can't believe it was an accident. Their logo features a gradient (print-media epic fail), and two low-contrast overlapping colors, the P and the background square (also a print-media epic fail).

I hope that the executives do not knee-jerk a reaction and demand a logo redesign, but instead play out the campaign and see how it pans out. I'm not convinced it was a mistake.

Perhaps the real redesign wasn't the logo, but their website and online presence?

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#93

Post by limedaring »

AjJi wrote: post #77
lwhi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exposure where? The rhetoric involved is an extension of the line "I can't pay you for this, but you could use it in your portfolio". The whole process reeks of exploitation. It's bullshit, imo.

Crowd sourcing doesn't mean "no pay", you should probably check some quality crowd sourcing sites, like TopCoder.

The winner gets paid, sure, but the "losers" get nothing for their time.

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#94

Post by brc »

edw519 wrote: post #23

Before I realized what this post really was, I tried to peel off the post-it note with my mouse. Now that's an entry that would have gotten some attention.

yeah, by the tone of the post, I don't think he was going to even design a fake logo without having someone to send an invoice to.

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#95

Post by mfukar »

mambodog wrote: post #88
Mc_Big_G wrote: post #39

I’ve redesigned your logo. It’s behind the post-it above. It’s unbelievably good. Fantastic, even. I’m convinced it’s what you need. aaaaaaand it turns out to be crap. Your policy of 3 (or whatever) "redesigns" turns out to give me 3 more crap designs and then, according to the contract, I have to pay you anyway. I spent $5,000 like that. Never again.

So designers should do the initial work for free? So their customer can say "nah, I don't like any of them" and then suddenly a design looking remarkably similar appears on their website/products, courtesy of a much cheaper 'designer' working off the 'rejected' design comps?

No, designers should not be expecting to form guilds or a cast and be treated like one. They're not a special kind of workers.

That is, assuming they do want to be treated like workers and not as artists. You hire workers, you don't hire artists, right? It'd be pretty derogatory for the real artist..

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#96

Post by evancaine »

A lot of the comments in this thread seem to imply that brand specialists will always deliver a quality logo. I can think of one recent example where that wasn't the case: the London 2010 Olympics logo. It cost £400,000 and was negatively received by the public and many industry professionals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Logo

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#97

Post by mfukar »

limedaring wrote: post #93
AjJi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crowd sourcing doesn't mean "no pay", you should probably check some quality crowd sourcing sites, like TopCoder.

The winner gets paid, sure, but the "losers" get nothing for their time.

Which is exactly what would've happened if the "winner" was hired in the first place without crowdsourcing. What's your point?

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#98

Post by mfukar »

acangiano wrote: post #15
mikeryan wrote: post #8

A bit of background on this. Gap just updated their logo, its getting pretty heavily slammed by the design community (I too think its god awful) More here: http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/october/new-gap... BTW the author's twitter feed, @Mike_FTW is one of the funnier feeds to follow.

Warning: @Mike_FTW uses a NSFW background.

It's OK, you're safe from women. Really.

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#99

Post by mfukar »

run4yourlives wrote: post #22

Simple response: The value of a product is set by the consumer, not by the producer. (This is true for over-inflated values as well, so don't bitch.) If the value set is too low for the producer, he either has an inflated sense of worth, or isn't doing a good enough job of educating the consumer, or both.

And here I was thinking that it was both demand and supply. Damn you, Adam Smith!

Re: Dear Gap, I have your new logo.

#100

Post by dansingerman »

lwhi wrote: post #73
Cushman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternately, crowdsourcing involves many people getting the chance to try their hand at something that, normally, only one person would do. I don't think it's surprising that that one person dislikes the idea.

The argument that the designers (/entrants) benefit isn't anything other than disingenuous posturing. Crowdsourcing doesn't give many people an 'opportunity' to try something new - it provides the client with cheap design. There's a very clear motivation behind providing design in this way, and the designer is always going to lose out.

If you are a good designer, this will work.

I bought a design on 99designs. Had a great experience with the designer, who I recommended to my friends, and now she is getting loads of work.

I'd say that's truly meritocratic <- a good thing.

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