branding Archives - White Boxer

Things Have Been Busy for Awhile

Chris on September 11, 2012

Over the past twelve months, things have been quite busy for me, both professionally and personally. During that time – and for me the most important – was becoming a father for the third time. I also began teaching a self-developed class at CCAD aimed toward helping professional print designers transition into web design. This fall will be my third time teaching the semester-long course. On top of those things, I’ve had plenty of work at my full time job building websites, and a few freelance projects thrown in there in case I considered taking a breather.

Because of that, things around these parts have been extremely quiet. I plan to change that soon. I have a backlog of blog ideas piling up that I want to thin out. Also, this site’s current design is about eight years old and long overdue for a makeover. When this current look – version 4 of this site for those that are counting – it was my first real venture into blogging, and first experience with WordPress (WP) and PHP. It didn’t go smoothly. I always felt the design was incomplete, but due to my newness with both WP and PHP, I wanted to get something in place, polished or not. I figured I would have time to come back and put the finishing touches on it.

Later has turned into several years, and my knowledge and skills have improved greatly. Plus web technology, especially CSS and HTML, and improved dramatically. So much has changed that tweaking this design is no longer time worth invested. Instead, I plan to roll out a new design for this site before the end of 2012. If you follow me on Dribbble, you’ve seen a few previews.

A new design was been long in coming, but it seems every time I begin the process, either something more pressing enters the fray, or the direction I was going with the site wasn’t working out the way I wanted it to. However, I was determined this summer to get the ball rolling and not let it stop. The new design is progressing, although slowly. I’ve also been contemplating borrowing a page from Jeffrey Zeldman and launch a new design in an incomplete stage and finishing it live. I’m not decided on this yet, but will post something once I make a decision. Also, follow me on Dribbble and you will get some glimpses of the new design, as well as other projects I’m working on, before they land here.

Logo review: Detroit Lions redesign

Chris on April 23, 2009

The Detroit Lions unveiled their modified logo and uniforms for the 2009 NFL season. Paul Lukas of Uniwatch fame recently gave his opinion of the redesign. Paul, for the most part, really didn’t care for the changes, mainly due to the black accent the Lions adopted this century. I usually agree with Paul’s views of uniforms, but in this case I differ quite a bit.

Personally, I don’t mind the black accent. Teams have been setting a trend the last decade or so in adding a third accent color — mainly to develop new uniforms to sell more of the stuff to the public. Black has become the most common accent teams have added. Its a smart move since black works with almost any combination, if done intelligently. For Detroit, there’s not many other options to go with their Honolulu blue and silver staples. A navy blue or indigo would probably work, but not much else. The major mistake the Lions made was the black alternate jersey, which was absolutely hideous. Other than that, it works in my opinion. Here’s my thoughts on the areas Paul broke down in his blog post:

Colors: I’m fine with the black accent as long as its not overdone. Paul completely hates it.

Logo: I think its an improvement, not that I thought the old one was that bad. It definitely has a more ferocious look, and I like the added detail that the old logo didn’t have. Again, I don’t mind the black accent.

Wordmark: I don’t think the new workmark is as bad as Paul feels. It is a little soft, but I’ll give points in trying to come up with something unique. I do agree with Paul that the logo and workmark should be consistent with the black accent (or in Paul’s opinion, not have one at all).

Helmet, shirt and pants stripes: I grouped these all together because its virtually the same change — the stripes. I like the new stripes because the old with the black accents just didn’t work.

Jersey color and chest wordmark: A definite improvement. I’m glad they used the silver in there instead of the older blue/black look.

Uni numbers: This is the one thing I thing is an utter failure. The wave cut looks horrible and makes the numbers difficult to read. They should have stopped and rounding the corners and been done with it. This is a case of overdesigning that backfired.

Socks: I don’t like them. I personally miss the old striped socks that every team had. It tied the uniforms together by mimicking the shirt and pants striping. I have no idea why everyone went to solid socks, but this was a real missed opportunity.

Overall, I think the new logo and uniforms are an improvement. I really hope they burn the old black alternates, but I have a feeling those damn things will taint the field again. Its definitely a better modification than what we’ve seen from the NFL in recent seasons. I expected much worse.

Update: Speaking of much worse, the Jacksonville Jaguars unveiled new uniforms as well. Complete disaster. I am in complete agreement with Paul’s review. In fact, I hate it more than he does. This fits right in with the garbage uniforms that the NFL has puked out in recent years (Minnesota, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Seattle … need I go on).

Five Questions for Eric Rickabaugh

Chris on January 10, 2009

Eric Rickabaugh is the owner of Rickabaugh Graphics, located in the Columbus, Ohio suburb of Gahanna. For over twenty years Rickabaugh Graphics has been creating award-winning logo designs for numerous Fortune 500 companies including Hasbro Toys, Coca-Cola, Toyota, MGM and Clorox. The firm has also worked on pro sports brands for the NFL, the NHL, the NBA and Minor League Baseball. Over the last decade and a half the firm has been applying their extensive logo expertise to the collegiate market. In this time they have become the leading collegiate branding firm and their clients have included the Big East Conference, the Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin, Seton Hall University, Vanderbilt University, North Carolina State, Baylor, Texas A&M University and many, many others. Their tremendous success in revitalizing collegiate brands has resulted in the studio becoming the primary firm assisting schools with native American nicknames build new traditons around less controversial icons. The studio’s collegiate designs have been the subject of feature articles in five major design publications and the firm’s owner, Eric Rickabaugh, has lectured on graphic design and branding issues at conventions for the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, the International Collegiate Licensing Association, Major and Minor League Baseball and at the The Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

White Boxer (WB):: You’ve been going graphic design professionally for 24 years, but during the last 10-15 years, you’ve really made a name for yourself in rebranding colleges and universities. How did that come about?
Eric:: Our company has always been known as a leading logo/identity firm but early on we primarily did corporate logos. Based on our accomplishments in corporate identity we were selected in 1991 by The Ohio State University to redesign their athletic identity. We applied all that we had learned in doing award-winning corporate identities to that project and it was a real success. In the first couple of years after the new identity was introduced the university saw a 225% increase in licensed income (that represents about one and a half million dollars). Of course with that kind of success other universities took notice and we were soon hired to design athletic identities for the University of Dayton and Xavier University. In 1995 the NBA noticed our work on these three projects and hired us to redesign the identity for the Philadelphia 76ers. It was at this point that I realized we were developing a very positive reputation in the specific field of athletic identity design. I began to actively promote Rickabaugh Graphics as an athletic identity design firm and also started to aggressively seek out clients who might be interested in our expertise. It is now nearly fifteen years later and we have worked for the NBA, the NFL, the NHL, Minor League Baseball and over one hundred universities across the country. Our expertise has also grown quite significantly from just doing athletic branding to also providing academic branding, youth mark and kid’s club programs, identity research and testing, mascot costume design and many other full-range collegiate branding services. Our many years of experience have provided us with the necessary insights to really assist our collegiate clients in dealing with many very challenging branding issues.
WB:: How is working with colleges and universities, and pro sports leagues for that matter, than working with your typical corporation when doing a rebranding project?
Eric:: Working with pro sports leagues is very much like working with any corporate client when creating a retail mark. The pace is fast, the goal is profit and the process is straight forward. Collegiate clients on the other hand are a very unique animal. The attachment to their logos is very emotional. Even a small change must be considered carefully as the response to an improperly handled change can be very negative. In addition, the stakeholders at a university are not only personally connected but they are also very diverse. A university’s audiences include students, faculty, administration, alumni, the community and fans just to name a few. The extreme range of their values, attitudes and age make the collegiate environment very complex and highly political. For this reason it is tremendously important to have a very deliberate branding process that includes involving many members of these audiences in focus groups to get a sense for their reaction to any proposed design. It is a very challenging and demanding branding specialty.
WB:: I would also think another challenge with the collegiate clients is the obscure or historical mascots some schools have that aren’t associated with sports very well (North Carolina Tarheels for example). One client of yours that seems to fit that is the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. How did you go about finding an identity that the university’s audience got behind?
Eric:: Certainly many colleges have some very interesting nicknames. In addition to the Hilltoppers we have also done Catamounts, Nor’easters, Wonder Boys and of course the Buckeyes. The challenge in coming up with an image for a unique name is part of the fun of what we do. The Western Kentucky Hilltoppers is an interesting case. When I arrived on campus they had a poorly drawn image of a “severed” hand holding a red towel as a logo. I was absolutely certain that we would come up with something other than that for the new athletic image. But upon doing the necessary research and talking to the university’s stakeholders it was clear just how “near and dear” that red towel image was to the WKU fans. It is steeped in a tradition which surrounds a famous WKU basketball coach who always waved a red towel at the games. It soon became apparent that we would be re-drawing the red towel logo rather than discarding it. We added a new set of wordmarks to the new red towel logo and the brand was complete. As you can see we let the university audiences help us find the correct image for their school.
WB:: What college or pro team identity do you see out there, besides your work, that you really admire?
Eric:: There is a lot of wonderful work that exists in the sports identity market. Of course the Yankees logo is a classic that has stood the test of time and is a very identifiable symbol. The Texas longhorn silhouette is another classic that stands out. More recent brands that appeal to me include the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Houston Texans among many, many others.
WB:: Two recent professional logos have been revealed this fall. What’s you opinion of both the updated look of the NFL logo, and the logo for the NBa’s Oklahoma City Thunder?
Eric:: The new NFL logo is an excellent refinement of a very successful brand. The typography has been cleaned up and given a much more contemporary feel. The football illustration looks like a dimensional football rather than the “hamburger” that the NFL players fondly called it. And the eight stars in the blue field now represent the eight divisions in the NFL and should be much easier to embroider. Overall an great job by the designers.I hate criticizing other designer’s work because none of us know the issues that were involved in the design process. Did the client dictate the design or in some other way hinder the design process? We don’t know the inside story. Still the new NBA Thunder logo is somewhat disappointing. Rather than portraying an image of a sport that is fast and exciting the logo looks dated and stagnant. There is very little personality in the design and if you take away the basketball it has very little meaning. There could have been a lot of visual excitement with the use of some lightning or clouds. Seems like a missed opportunity.

Five for Friday 2008.04.09

Chris on April 11, 2008

I have grossly neglected posting for awhile, but things have been a bit busy lately. To try and get into a routine of posting, I will attempt to at least give a weekly posting of other links that caught my eye from the past week.

Blue Flavor Redesigns

The folks at Blue Flavor, a Seattle-based interactive agency, have redeisgned there site. Keith has a great write up on the design and latest happenings there.

British Royal Mint Coin Redesign

Just beautiful. Compare that to the changes on the U.S. five dollar bill.

2008 Logo Design Trends

Nothing too surprising, and honestly, I think some of these were getting dated in 2007.

99designs: Bullshit 2.0

Scary post by Kevin Potts on the latest design service. Freelancers beware!

30 Must See Comment Designs for Web Designers

Nice collection of comment designs from Blog Design.

Inspired or Stolen?

Chris on March 29, 2007

The online design community has been in an uproar this week (and rightly so) over the apparent thievery of Dan Cederholm’s logo design for his design studio, Simplebits. There are several opinions on the matter, and I felt compelled to share mine.

Innocent coincidence?

Was the Simplebits logo stolen, or was it pure coincidence that the company in question, LogoMaid, happened to have a logo very similar? This is the same question that software giant, Quark, was asked over a year ago about their new logo design. Not long after it was unveiled, the creative community uncovered a number of similar designs. The public reaction to Quark was similar to the reaction LogoMaid is receiving. Did Quark, or more specifically the agency that designed the logo, steal the idea from someone else?

I think this is a good spot to examine the business model of LogoMaid. LogoMaid offers pre-designed logos to businesses for a modest price. The selling point is that you can save a lot of money by getting a premade logo as opposed tousually spending more with a design studio or advertising agency to custom-design one for you. Their parent company, Vilords Media Network, operates another company with the same principle, Design Galaxy, but with the slant on web template design.

LogoWorks, another mass-produced logo manufacturer, has run into similar accusationsover the years of stealing ideas from established logos. Their mantra is to pay freelance designers a small fee to design company logos that they resell at modest prices as well. It begs the question, is it coincidence or theft? If theft, who’s to blame, the company itself or the actual designer?

Let’s face reality. The number of self-proclaimed graphic designers in the world are staggering. People will seek out other professional work to get inspired. Some will even go so far as to steal a design from another as a quick solution to a cheap buck. Companies like LogoWorks (and I assume LogoMaid) use a large number of designers to do their work. Can you honestly expect them to know if each and every design they buy is legitimately original?

Who to hold accountable

They say the true character of a person is shown when faced with diverse circumstances. With that in mind, let’s compare the responses between the Quark and LogoMaid situations:

Within six months after the logo contraversy, Quark unveiled a new logo. According to Glen Turpin, the company’s director of corporate communications:

“Quark listened to the feedback we received from the design community in relation to our re-branding initiative in September and decided to create a new logo that is both an evolution of our visual identity and a strong representation of the new Quark… Changing the mark to avoid any perception of similarity enables us to further define our unique identity.”

Compare that response to that of Paul Viluda of LogoMaid:

“The main shape according to our designer is a font symbol and you do not have the rights to claim ownership to freeware font symbols. Other than the actual shape, I see no relevance. Our logo was registered at c-site, the registration has been approved. According to c-site, we own the copyrights to that actual logo. We do not need to steal anyones ideas.”

And this:

“According to (Simplebits) website, you did the rebrand in December, correct? Please check the screenshot for RH Restyling (company from Holland) we did in October I believe. Hmm, I am just currious how it would be possible to “copy” your logo when your “rebranding” was done in mid December. You’ll find out the logo we sell at logomaid.com is one of the concepts the customer didn’t choose to use. We are strongly considering a lawsuit against simplebits not only because of the logo, but also the fact that you are harming our goodwill.”

Designer Nathan Smith, who has a similar issue with LogoMaid wrote that he received “a series of rude emails from Jan Kalvan and Peter Olexa of LogoMaid.” I don’t presume to know exactly what the people at LogoMaid are thinking or how they conduct their business, but the words and tone of their response in this matter casue me to be very suspicious of the legitimacy of the work they sell. Quark, in my opinion, had no intent of stealing someone’s logo design, and wanted to salvage their reputation and credibility with the very people they serve. This is evident by their willingness to redesign their logo without slinging mud at anyone else.

The reaction to companies like LogoMaid would have been completely different if their response was similar to Quark’s … apolgize for the coincidence and remove the logo under question. What would it have hurt them? Certainly removing a handful of questionable logos would not have hurt their bottom line and their “amazing collection of 3700 pre-designed logos” would it? To respond in such a defensive and threatening way questions their desire to be viewed as a legitimate design resource.

The solution

Unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer to design thievery. Regardless of how much the design community tries to regulate it, there will be people out there trying to profit off the hard work of others. I also, don’t think that lawsuits, as appealing as they seem, will solve the answer either. Copyright violations are difficult and extremely expensive to prosecute. The reason large corporations like Apple can do it effectively is because they have the resources to make it possible. Small studios and individuals like Simplebits, quite frankly, don’t have the time or resources to carry it through. And with the global nature of the internet, international enforcement of copyright is next to impossible. So what can we do?

I was asked last year about my thoughts on gas prices reaching $3.00 per gallon and what I felt should be done about it, especially when oil companies reported record billion-dollar profits. As much as I believe that the prices were the result of corporate greed, those prices were also being dictated by demand. As long as consumers would not change their driving habits (more fuel-efficient vehicles and public transportation), things would not change. Why should they? Consumers need to collectively bring the change against corporate injustice. Only then will companies truly listen.

I feel the same way about dealing with shady companies like LogoMaid. When businesses refuse to work with a company that has questionable ethics and practices, then they will either change or go out of business. Paul Viluda of LogoMaid said it himself:

“It’s about the market…if people wouldn’t be interested in our products, we wouldn’t provide it…as simple as that.”

This call is to all businesses out there that seem intrigued by companies like LogoMaid. Do your research. If they have a reputation of questionable business practices like this, avoid them. If you do buy stolen work, your company can be held liable as well if it would ever get to that point. Why would you want to risk your company’s reputation to something like that?