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If you use Brands of the World (BotW) often, you might have noticed that they have a new logo … but the real question is, does this prized time-saving tool for designers worldwide have your new logo? BotW now has Elexicon’s mark on board, and they should have yours too. Here’s why.
Having recently supplied BotW with our logo (Side note: BotW would be better named “Logos of the World” since the site is mainly a high-resolution logo repository — logos aren’t brands but rather ingredients of brands.) I can identify with the unease experienced in the upload process. With perhaps too much old school marketer in me, I felt a little uncomfortable tossing our infinitely scalable and yes, infinitely editable vector logo into a giant, heavily used bucket of brands (albeit a nice, well designed bucket with a navigable UI and search function). BotW has over 2 million unique visitors and over 30 million page views per month; and when you understand the importance of taking steps to protect your visual identity or that of a client’s, being cavalier about this is not an option.
So contemplating the decision to upload your vector logo to BotW can look a little like the self-retorting banter of Wallace Shawn as the Sicilian villain, Vizzini in the iocane poisoning scene of The Princess Bride … It seems that no matter what decision you make; or how long you take to make it, you’re going to keel over afterward. If you upload your logo you’ll have the angst of imagining someone misusing your mark in an infinite number of high-resolution ways ranging from comic mischief to fraud. However if you don’t upload your mark, other companies realizing significant benefits from public relations and marketing expediencies, external links to their site and global exposure will leave you behind.
BotW has their own list of usage benefits, but for me what tips the scales to the upload decision (or drinking the upload goblet?) is that I’ve been THAT designer. Plenty of times, I’ve had to scramble for a variety of logos to complete creative work on mission-critical (but somehow forgotten about until the last minute?) group promotions in print ads or large format applications. Sometimes there’s enough time to track down quality logos for each company through the proper channels. Other times there isn’t enough time. This results in a loss for both the company and the designer who either has to live with sacrificed quality or take enough headache medicine to painstakingly refurbish a poor quality version.
It might be a utopian dream, but a single repository for the most up-to-date and high quality vector logos of all the companies in the world (hooah!) would likely save many organizations and designers from ghastly reproductions of web-snagged GIFs and JPGs – or from having to omit the company from the piece. As of today, BotW is as close as it gets to that utopia. As to protecting your visual identity, the question becomes: How are you protecting your identity if a designer working on a legitimate but time-crunched project snags a small 72 dpi logo from your website and enlarges it by 500 jaggy percentage points for a trade show poster? (I – ahem — heard of – uh — some other designer doing that before). And of course, you can also post your logo usage guidelines.
Furthermore, downloading a logo from BotW is contingent upon agreeing to their terms of use and penalties including disallowing use of the logo without the owner’s permission. At the end of the day, if someone is bent on using your logo without permission, they’ll probably do so without the assistance of BotW and if a designer is trying to use it correctly, BotW can help. So while all companies are unique and should review their own policies regarding the provision of high-resolution logo files, I think the benefits of utilizing Brands of the World generally outweigh the risks.
Happy uploading … and like Vizzini wisely said, “Never tangle with a jaggy logo when your brand is on the line!” (I might have modified that a bit).
OK, designers. Next time you ponder that great visual identity, forget the “visual mark looks good on a fax machine, too” requirement. If Flogos, an Alabama-based special effects company gets their way we’ll all be putting our logo comps through the “looks great chopped out of helium soap bubbles and floating through the sky” test.
They claim to be ready to custom “float” your logo in size increments (diameter?) of 24, 36, and 48 inches. They already have contracts in place with Disney and Universal Studios and pro sports teams are raising eyebrows. In addition to assumed stress relieving benefits of this device to a skeet-shooting logo critic such as myself, the inventors also say they can vary the height of these “cloud advertisements” and the soap/helium mixtures are safe for the environment and airplanes.
There does, however seem to be a number of Flogos skeptics out there with cynical chatter appearing on LiveScience and Brand New over the conquest of pristine “blue sky” space for the purposes of marketing. While I see their point, daytime sky marketing isn’t a new medium (and we don’t even need to discuss “night time signage” using roaming search lights, fireworks, and other darkness shattering media). Airplane banners, sky writing, tethered helium markers and hot air balloons have been around for decades — and arguably do their work in a more visually obtrusive fashion than a few dainty bubbles. Colorado based GoFast, a sports energy drink has even sought to conquest the skys by sponsoring a jet pack team (didn’t know there was such a thing, but it looks like they’re having a “pilot search” if you feel like getting in line as a guinea pig ala flambe’. Boss, consider this my formal request for time off — yee haw!).
So whether you’re a Flogos cynic or a Flogos seeker watching for the first appearance of this thing in your neighborhood (I predict a used car lot), you have to admit there’s something captivating about a free floating logo drifting skyward, with only the wind to guide it. Just try and tell me you’ve never stood there in that crowd — stiff necked and squinting up at that tiny disappearing spec that used to be some kid’s helium balloon while everyone takes turns whispering, “I can still see it!” and “Where’d it go?”. So with that type of captivation, maybe this company has stumbled upon the advertising specialties industry’s lightning in a bottle — or in a bubble? But let’s not even bother asking if there’s a money back guarantee for those unexpected wind gusts.
What can I say about this? Sketching your own furniture into reality seems cool, but I’m looking forward to a day when I can rapid prototype my own full-scale house.
I was so excited to read about the upcoming full-length independent film, Helvetica, that I almost forgot to be depressed at what a geek that makes me.
Take one of these items backpacking. Impress your friends at the campfire.
Wendy MacNaughton recalls her design adventure in a national civic sensitization campaign for the first democratic local elections in Rwanda in late 2000. Sure, mixing your own spray mount from flower and water is tough — a MacGyverism to be admired. But what must it be like to be handed the task of conceptualizing a visual vernacular in a developing nation that has endured unimaginable hardship — as well as ethnic and political tension? This requires a return to an axiom of all good visual communication: “In order to create effective, relevant work, visual communicators need to learn to work cooperatively with members of the communities they are communicating to.”
Wendy’s closing remarks leave some ambiguity as to whether or not her efforts performed as intended. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating case study of an important, gutsy project.
And, let’s just ignore that little blurb about the Mac being “useless”.
Elexicon is an interactive design and development agency based in Grand Rapids, Michigan...More>
