10 Yetis Insight Blog – Corporate Logos - The good, the bad and the just damn ugly

A logo, the forefront of your company, well I would say that as I’m a designer but it’s pretty damn important to get it right. Whether you’re spending £400k or £400, even the top companies can get it wrong, but some of course smash it!

We’ll start with the bad…

BBC Three

Launched early January, the new BBC Three logo made its debut to a fair bit of mockery, admittedly I thought something had gone wrong on my BBC iplayer when I first saw it….no it’s here for the long run. Some compared it to a Tesco plastic bag, and most thought the inspiration behind it came very close to the BBC parody show W1A.....

2012 London Olympic Games

Well we all hated it didn’t we? So it had to make the list. The 2012 London Olympic Games may have been 4 years ago but crikey I still don’t feel ready to forgive design firm Wolff Olins. With a price tag of £400,000 I think we all expected a little more, British citizens evens created a petition to have the logo scrapped and redesigned with over 48,000 signatures. Regardless, a unity of hate for a logo is very impressive.

Kostelecké uzeniny

Kostelecké uzeniny is a popular Czech sausage company that has been around since 1917. Featured on all their products since the 20’s, need I say anymore. I really feel for the graphic designers who have to try and work with this, however for the Czech’s a classic that would be surely missed if ever changed. Seriously though they should change it.

Highlight

Lastly the logo that gives you a headache, not just a visual nightmare it actually physically hurts your head looking at it. Social app Highlight finds nearby users and shows things you have in common with each other. Lucky for us and our heads, they seem to have scrapped this logo. This gets my vote for the worst logo EVER. I’m sorry for bringing this into your life.

Logo’s done right!*

Royal Albert Hall

Launched early 2015, the Royal Albert Halls new logo uses the iconic halls shape with red and gold colour palette to reflect the buildings Victorian heritage. I like the fact they have used a serif typeface, combining modern design with traditional, but it definitely works well, good job.

Google

Google’s biggest logo change in 16 years, it was BIG news. Changing from a serif to a sans-serif but keeping the original colour palette, the change was needed and works well, its designed to be fully scalable from your phone to your desktop. It’s got that playful vibe and still has the iconic Google feel which is recognised worldwide.

Pizzahut

Keeping the main elements of the original logo but with a refreshing new look, with the red representing tomato sauce and keeping the hut icon firmly in its place. Providing the world with pizza for over 50 years the new logo works well and can definitely makes a good effort to keep up with it’s other pizza chain rivals, talking branding only here of course, I’m strictly a Domino's girl.

Black & Decker

Power tool giants Black & Decker launched their new logo in 2014 to mixed reviews, some criticised for loosing the iconic nut, a brave move. Trying to appeal to a universal audience with new product launches with a friendlier brand image, I think this hits the nail on the head. Puns aside, this is a controversial choice but I like it.

Recap

So logo design...I think what we can learn from this, and main point, make sure your logo has NO sexual connotations, you will be grabbing your audiences attention for all the wrong reasons, and your clients may run for the hills, but you will be giving us a good laugh. Do hire a professional designer if you can, unless you are a designer yourself of course, it’s worth it, or even better hire us, but seriously don’t open up paint and think yeah that looks good enough, it probably doesn’t and friends and family may lie to you.

"A logo acts primarily as an identifier - something people can associate a company with at a single glance. A successful logo should be appropriate, scaleable, memorable, distinctive, practical, and simple.”

David Airey - Graphic Designer & Famous Writer

* This is my personal opinion, I’m only a single graphic designer. I sadly don’t speak for the entire design community.