Back in 2008 the WGN Superstation ( the station that lovingly gives us the worst broadcast team in the history of humanity, yes I’m talking about you Hawk Harrelson and whoever your tool color man is) brought us one of the most frighteningly terrible identities in recent memories.
With a rebrand as WGN America, the station gave us this creepy, goth chick watching you watching her logo. What exactly was the meaning behind this? I don’t know. I’m assuming you couldn’t give me a logical reason behind this image either. Is it a woman watching WGN in a really really well lit room? Do they show a bunch of crazy indie films on the network? Do they strive for the really weird eye shadow demographic? After being so poorly received by just about everybody, only a year later WGN has once again spent gobs of money to try again to give it’s station an identity worthwhile of such a large company. And, of course, once again a failure.
Now believe me, it’s an upgrade. And, from that perspective then the design can be coined somewhat of a success. But, lets break this thing down. Three squares, with rounded edges, skewing together to form an akward disjointed shape? Heavy handed serif typeface. And the color palette, Olive green, lime green, and puke green. What…?
I really hate putting down others’ work, mostly because I understand the challenges associated with different levels of “politics” between clients and firms. I understand that there are certain things that occur on the road to a design that the general public never sees. But, this is just too over the top bad, twice! Hopefully, 2010 will bring us try number 3, and maybe a non-offensive solution.