Thinking about pixels
The other day I was perusing a graphic design blog and came across a post about logo fails — typically defined as logo designs that communicate something other than the intended message. Ideally, logos are designed to distill a brand’s message down to a simple glyph. But, like Rorschach tests, simple glyphs are open to interpretation — for example, a longhorn that looks like a uterus.
But the fails presented were more nuanced than visual miscommunication. I’d be inclined to call these branding fails . The logos and word marks are just a visual manifestation of branding missteps. Rebranding that thumbs its nose at brand equity — or obfuscates identification altogether — isn’t the logo’s fault as much as it was the fault of the concept itself.