In the first part of this series, I took a look at the tone of online design debates and its effect on the industry as a whole. I originally wrote this in January, planning on doing a quick edit before it got lost in the sands of time. Updates have been posted when necessary.
Part 2 - Just plain ugly.
As the tone of the discourse surrounding brand redesigns lately gets more and more cynical, I find myself being more and more turned off to the idea of discussing design anonymously in the public forum. There have been several recent examples though, where I think the criticism has been levied unfairly, allow me to elaborate;
Urban Outfitters
Anybody who has taken a recent visual inventory of the Urban Outfitters brand should not be surprised at the "bad as good" anti-design direction they've been pursuing lately. Some comments have referred to it as looking like a Powerpoint experiment gone horribly wrong. This look has been popularized by young european designers, and I feel it's essentially on target for what Urban Outfitters does. For years they've been successful by staying one step ahead of what their target markets think they want, this approach is no different. I should also somewhere here note that I am friends with some of their designers, so a bias is completely possible, but that's not necessarily it. The point of the "redesign" is that it's not in any shape way or form a "redesign", and certainly is not a new logo. Brand New, to their credit has done a fantastic job analyzing the response and airing a well-written response to the criticism including links to Steven Heller's Cult of the Ugly, and 032c magazine. I bring this up because this seems to have been a great example of the hysteria created by Gap-gate overflowing and heading for other outlets regardless of whether or not the mob understood what they were critiquing. While the visual aesthetic has certainly got mixed results from consumers and designers alike, I'd like to think that the freedom allowed in the life of a designer at UO has consistently produced vivid results. This is not a new logo, it's not even a new look. It's one step in the constantly evolving life that is the Urban Outfitters brand. UO has constantly grown and evolved with their customers, a tactic that has always left it feeling like it's part of the moment. Love it or hate it, the screenshots kept by angst-ridden designers are the only parts of this "rebranding" that are still active. Well, that and the conversation on twitter.
Update: Since originally writing this, UO - especially the website - has indeed moved along without so much of a mention from anybody. As noted here.
Starbucks
Starbucks has taken the text off of their cups. It's a smart move. The logo is completely recognizable without Starbucks over it, and this will help to build brand equity in multi-lingual geographies. Every identity aspires to be able to communicate its brand with the bare essential elements one day. The biggest and greatest brands in America today have made case-study after case-study of this stuff. But naturally, there's been talk of how it's a horrible move, and some people are questioning whether they should go back to the old logo. No, they shouldn't. It's simple, it's beautiful, and find me one person on earth who won't look at that new cup and say "starbucks".
Update: It seems Starbucks is thinking beyond the logo, and has Partnering with BetaCup and Core77 in sponsoring a competition to redesign their cups with landfills in mind. Find out more at Fast Company, or check the video.
Betacup from the betacup on Vimeo.
Comedy Central
Conversely, in the realm of "real, actual rebrands", Comedy Central scaled back from the planet-as-cityscape logo to something much more minimal. Personally, I love the new approach. Sure, visually it's a little sparse, but when you see it in action it comes to life with staggering grace and really intelligent execution.
Comedy Central's New Logo from Cliff Kuang on Vimeo.
This is what a great identity does, it has legs, it grows and adapts, it becomes more than just a mark and some colors. Given that Comedy Central is a broadcast entity, this entire dynamic is actually flipped on its head. Less important is what the logo looks like, while more important is how a user interacts with the brand, and how the brand is reinforced throughout web, print, and broadcast. Regardless of the positive reviews this redesign got on many major news outlets, (brand new, motionographer, etc) one source decided to take a more sophomoric route.
The headline from the Agency Spy article speaks volumes for the maturity the writer and organization would approach the story with - Comedy Central's New Logo = Suck. To quote the article, "Watch out, Gap, Viacom's Comedy Central might usurp you as the front-runner for Worst. Logo. Ever (well at least this year)."
The article offers no constructive criticism whatsoever, though it does go on to link to other "egregious redesigns". I'm not even going to waste my time critiquing the article, as it's less than a paragraph and certainly speaks for itself. More important is the battle that began to rage in the comments section. Designer and accused "Brand Manager" Evan Stremke dared to fly in the face of Agency Spy by posting:
"Attacking major brand overhauls is tired. Give it a rest, folks. The Gap logo wasn't the most beautiful mark, but it fit the brand like a glove. Just because a television station airs comedies doesn't mean it needs to be exclusively "fun." The mark itself might not be totally playful, but neither is all of CC's programming content. It's sophisticated with a bit of quirkiness, and the whole identity system (commercials, web design, etc) is a perfect fit for their programming. Nothing wrong here, move along."
The comments then devolve into posting images of Evan's work for everybody to rip apart, and various bickering over whether or not this is indeed the worst redesign of the year (Urban Outfitters gets named as well). As a result of this dialogue, the author from Agency Spy (who happens to be posting all this anonymously, by the way), makes a whole new post a week later dedicated to Evan Stremke, anointing him "Asshole of the Week".
Please note the first paragraph where the writer claims he "doesn't enjoy picking on people when they hate on stuff", establishing his credentials as "not a hater" - though he continues to hate on poor Evan for standing up to his beliefs. Again, his writing does nothing to explain why he does not like the redesign, simply that it does (unequivocally) indeed suck. And that anyone who's willing to disagree with him is either a horrible designer in his own right, or just too stupid for him to bother with.
Obviously, at this point, the conversation has been reduced to the level of idle taunts on the playground in elementary school. It's not even about the redesign anymore, it's about an author who posts anonymously attacking the reader who dared disagree with him in a public forum. Nobody wins. Except maybe Evan who gets points in my book for not firing back with more of a response than he did (Evan's well-worded and only slightly smart-ass response can be found in the article, or on his blog here.) Keep in mind that at this point in the conversation, Evan is the only party who has actually tried to have a constructive conversation about the merits of the work, and as a result has been vilified and slandered. Real classy, Agency Spy.
There are numerous other redesigns that have caused controversy that could very well be included into this post. My alma-matter MCAD's recent redesign, the iTunes 10 icon, Seattle's Best Coffee, and many more could be included in this list. My point in all this is not to demonize the members of the design community that are speaking out against the redesigns, their opinions are actually quite necessary to the conversation. Obviously I want to promote the dialogue of design by not only designers, but the general public as well. As certain recent events have shown (both inside and outside of the design community), we need to be very careful in how we phrase our arguments. Unfortunately design studios and corporations alike are typically very tight-lipped about rolling out changes to identities, which only tends to fan the flames of controversy. When nobody knows who did the work, why they made those decisions, or what the goal of it was, the nameless, faceless beast is a lot easier to poke.
Until we all can have a decent dialogue about design in the public realm without resorting to blanket statements and name calling, I'm going to just stay over here and make shit.