Came across these on the Twitternet the other day and loved both.
The first is by Intelligence in Social Media and it’s a must watch:
The second is from the always-great AdFreak and, inspired by the recent horrible redo of The Gap’s logo, it’s a look at 30 other graphic failures.
Common sense prevents anyone else from wearing the damn thing.
On behalf of actual Mongolians everywhere I must protest this gang’s use of both the name and the imagery.
Actual Mongolians — left– are a lot cooler than the biker gang. And they don’t wear sunglasses. That’s because they are tougher than that.
The Idaho State Vandals football team is “dumping the letter “I” from the buttocks region of players’ new pants following a season-opening 70-0 loss to the Arizona Wildcats.” The buttocks region? Actually there was a small version of the logo at left that was literally over the anus on the pants. In no other sport but football would it have even been noticed.
BTW, that headline is an out and out falsehood. They had logo issues before the loss … but I couldn’t resist.
Logoblink has an excellent and informative display of Presidential election logos from 1960 to the present. I say informative because it is quite clear that graphically as well as politically most candidates in the last 48 years have been interchangeable.
Still, I know who I’m voting for.
Comedy Central has even more details on Battlestar Gallactica vs. the actual candidates here.
And speaking of voting for lame characters, turns out Brit PM Gordon Brown lost his latest election to NONE OF THE ABOVE. As mentioned previously Madame Tussaud’s wax museum had put it up for a vote as to whether or not Brown should be included in the collection. Well, “83.8 percent of voters, drawn from museum visitors and online supporters, gave Brown the thumbs down. Some 5,308 people told Madame Tussauds not to bother, while 1,025 people (16.2 percent) said he should be immortalised in wax.” Yeah, but I bet the Supreme Court will rule him in.
The war on terror gets ugly, Part 2
Last week I made fun of the CIA for its terrible anti-terror graphic. And rightfully so. However, in the interests of fairness, let me say that the pro-terror groups aren’t going to win any design competitions either.
Al Qaeda generally uses two symbols … a badge and a flag.
The badge has all the key brand qualities in it — death, God, the Holy Book and a finger in the universal symbol of “we’re #1” — BUT it is way, way too busy. Graphic clean up on aisle 666, please.
The flag.
Qaeda’s flag really has nothing that makes it distinctive. This could be any Arabic phrase on a black background. For all I know this is an ad for a McDonald’s in Baghdad. If you’re a multi-national — of any sort — your logos have to be easily identifiable to foreigners or the illiterate (or, in my case, foreigners who are illiterate).
Compare Qaeda’s badge and flag with the logo of the United Liberation Front of Asom:
Like the Al Qaeda symbols, the ULFA logo also contains text in a language that is totally unknown to me but the overall effect is clear and easily recognized from a distance. (Image via IronicSans which has a great article on trends in the logos of terrorist organizations) It’s clean and the use of the crossed doa gives it a visual hook that an ignoramus like myself can quickly recognize. Remember, while its important for your emblems to appeal to your base, it also has to be easily ID’d by outsiders. It’s not just enough to kill people and destroy things, you’ve got to market it!
When all else fails, bring out the bad graphics.
Matthew Yglesias found the following on the CIA’s website:
I still prefer the board game.
(Thanks to Skott Klebe for the tip!)
Collateral Damage 