Breaking News: Just discovered, a toddler from 1980 has brought, from back in time, a logo designed on a Tandy 1000 for his Kindergarten Arts & Crafts festival. Clothing Company Gap, so enthralled by the romanticism of a time-traveling baby, has decided to use his “creation” as it’s new identity.
While this seems far fetched and unlikely, it’s seems more unlikely that a multi-million dollar company would actually “rebrand” itself with this identity:
It’s gotta be a joke right? Is it April Fools? No, it’s October. This can’t be right, huh? It’s just an internet hoax, let’s go to Gap.com. AHHHHHHHHHHHH!H!!!!!!!!!
Generally, I don’t like to jeer or make fun or complain (even though I’m very good at it) about other designers or design firm’s work. I know very well the issues that can arise between the designers and the client over the intent and execution of design work. In many cases the designer or design firm, while attempting to take an identity design in one direction, can have it veer down an un-intended course. From a far, it is very easy to look at something and say “man that’s a crappy logo, I could do better than that” while not having any idea of the behind-the-scenes action. Generally speaking, real design work is not designed in a vacuum but rather interacts with the forces of clients and biases that they (and we as designers) have already established within our minds. Basically, I don’t like ripping someone else’s hard work because I don’t know the whole story.
With that said, holy crap! This is awful. I don’t need to know the client interaction to know this is awful. At some point the client/design firm relationship must end if they are dictating to you that you must make a design that looks like you did it in powerpoint. It would be like a 5 star restaurant serving a bacon and peanut butter under-cooked burger because the owners’ daughter really wanted it. There’s a reputation to uphold. There’s no way this can see the light of day. Who actually did this? I can’t find it, obviously someone too ashamed to show their faces.
Let’s break it down:
1. Open Word, or Powerpoint. Select Helvetica as your font. Type “Gap”. Guess what, you’re halfway done. Don’t do any editing to the typeface, that might take effort.
2. Look for design inspiration, steal NYSE logo
3. Draw a square. (because it had a square before, get it!).
4. Add a gradient to square (because web 2.0 gradients are hip!!! And identity design that is designed with current trends, always a good idea)
5. Awkwardly place a square peg in a round hole by putting it behind the p, for no reason at all.
Done. Logo for giant company.
Seriously, someone, anyone, tell me what this is? What was the intent? Why would you go out of the way to ruin my day with such a mind-numbing example of horrible design. Please, someone call Frodo and throw this thing in the lake of fire.
Why does this make me so mad? It’s a smudge on the profession of design that this could be allowed to represent us (as a design community) with such a high profile company. It’s the same thing screen writers felt when they watched Dude Where’s My Car.