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Rant: The Difference Between Uettbein? & Wellbeing
The rise of the ‘logo designer’ is an interesting phenomenon. The logo designer is freed from the shackles of ordinary graphic design conventions. They actively shirk the responsibility of creating cohesive and rigourously designed visual identities in favour of creating mere stamps for clients to stick wherever they please. I imagine it’s quite an easy life, doling out logos like bites of candy (expensive candy, some logo designers may charge up to £600 for said ‘mere stamp’ without having to worry about implementation or ‘after sales care’). In the case of Gareth Howell’s ‘Optical Pleasure’ [opticalpleasure.co.uk] you don’t even have to bother with generating your own ideas for said logos. Just visit a website you like, grab a bit of artwork and away you go.
Am I sounding a little sarky? You might too is you opened up Computer Arts magazine [computerarts.co.uk] and saw you’re own original carefully considered artwork (in this case a typeface) with someone else’s name under it… and reworked so badly. In the image below, the top graphic is Gareth’s butchered rendition of the word ‘wellbeing’ which actually reads something like ‘Uettbein?’; in the middle there is the graphic posted on my foliosite which I guessing he used to make said logo and below is how the logo should have looked had Gareth actually had the ‘Bubbleblock’ typeface and used the letters correctly.
Gareth’s biggest blunder was mistaking a typeface for straight artwork. The typeface in question, Bubbleblock, is still in development and he could have asked for a Beta version which I have been gingerly distributing to a handful of fellow designers to see if it’s any good (it also comes with a legal notice outlining terms of use which Gareth’s wellbeing logo has breached). If you’d like a version of the Bubbleblock typeface, email [michael at boico.net] and if you’re especially nice I’ll email you back a Beta Test version for you to have a play with… then we can all start to create logos as special as the one Gareth has chosen to fling out into the world (well, into Swansea anyways).
At the risk of sounding like an accident insurance advert… have you had your work right royally ripped off (and I don’t just mean ‘re-appropriated’) by a another so-called ‘creative’? If so and you feel the need to vent, send us examples and we’ll post the best… er, most well jusified examples up here on Boicozine or just repeat after me… out with anger, in with love, out with anger, in with love…
Author: Boicozine / Date: February 8th, 2008
Categories: Graphic Design, Rants, Typography /