Surveyors...

Hooray for inapropriate font use. I found this little advert in a high-class UK newspaper's classified section.

Last time I checked surveyors are the people who measure land to find property lines, make sure you can build in a certain area, or keep track of the pipes and water mains under ground. So please tell me why you would a child's handwriting font for your main logo? Also, Comic Sans for the rest of the text? I hope to god that they fired whomever made this small ad.

If you have a peek at the website, you get this florid coral pink page with the logo in white. And each of the 2 links goes to the same page. Thank god that they fit the subject matter so much better than these ads and splash page.

Suggestions? Use a more conservative font and color. Something serif, and a business suit color.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Just a note, the original logo is on the top, and the newer one is on the bottom. All logos are (C) their respective companies.

Starting off with the Stop & Shop logo.The original logo was and still is very iconic with this popular grocery store. The red and green "traffic lights" fit the name very well, attract the eye, and has served the company well over the years. By today's standards it may be a little outdated in the text department with the "Star Wars" style "ST" and "SH" and the general shape of the letters do look a bit 70's, but like I said, it is an image that people know and are familiar with. If you wanted to update this logo and still keep it iconic, I would look into changing just the font, something similar, yet more modern looking. However, the designers over at Stop & Shop feel that the way to update an iconic image is to completely start from scratch. With the new purple, yellow, red, and green logo I don't see "Stop" & Shop any more, and I really do not see how the wedges represent a grocery store or the name of the company.



Next up is D'angelo, a popular deli famous for it's grinders.
The original logo was and is very retro 1967, eye catching, and that is what I like about it. I guess the designers at D'angelo though it was time for an update. What they did was, like in the Stop & Shop case, was completely redo the logo and not keep anything about it that makes you recognize the brand. They got rid of the grinder "L" and used one of the most boring type faces around -- Copperplate Gothic set in bold -- and make it look more like a bakery than a deli. I guess this new logo could be fine, maybe throw some imagery of cheese and lettuce under the roll on the top and make it look sandwich like.



This logo has probably had the rounds in your inbox along with other funny and wrong images.
The original logo for the Arlington Pediatric Center contains an unintentional subliminal message... I understand that it is supposed to be a parent, or a doctor caring for a child, but it doesn't really look that way. I don't think I really need to explain what it looks like here, I hope you all are adults and can add 2 & 2. The serif text next to the icon is appropriate for a medical center, very clean and professional looking. Over all, it is a pretty good logo for a doctor office, they just need to change the image on the left.
I guess they finally looked at the logo again after reading about it all over the net and decided to update it. When I checked the site earlier today they have this new one all over it. While it is more appropriate I sadly feel that it is a down grade. They took a very simple idea and went with it. Now personally, I feel that they did not execute this well. I see where they added "bathroom sign" children holding a teddy bear in the letters to add the visual of a pediatrician, but to me it just seems very cluttered and busy.



The original Wal-Mart logo has always been simple, bold and noticeable. The new logo is also simple but not as bold. I can sort of see why they changed it... it looks like they are trying to class things up a bit. I'm not sure how well this is going to go over because the classic navy blue logo has become iconic with Wal-Mart's low prices.
On the other side I kind of like the newer logo. It is much more modern looking and follows many of the current trends in graphic and logo design. However, it doesn't carry the same message as the original.

Body Copy

What I am going to talk -briefly- about is body copy. Body copy is:

"The main text found in publications we read, body copy is the text of the stories and articles. Body copy is not the headlines, subheads, captions, or pull-quotes. Body copy is usually between 8 and 14 points in size and readability is the key to selecting fonts for body copy." -About.com

Most of, if not all body text should be set in a serif type face. Why? Because this is a lot easier to read in print, it's not distracting, and looks more serious, professional, and finished. If you do decided to use a sans-serif font, I suggest to use it for a short sentence or as an eye catch. Sans-serif font's are also less formal looking than the serif.

To the side, we have an excerpt from some travel magazine or something... (I didn't read it, just liked the layout) See how the sans-serif font for the headers stands out against the body copy, and how the body copy is legible yet blends in with the document?

Popular body copy fonts include: Georgia, Times New Roman/ Times, Garamond, Bondi, and Book Antiqua, to name a few.

Why I brought this subject up is because at my job I have been doing some brochure and design work. Now a lot of companies have guidelines and rules as to what colors, fonts, images, logo specs and what not can be used. This is fine. The company that I work for, has 4 fonts that we are allowed to use. They are: Din, Helvetica Inserat (redrawn Helvetica Black Condensed [Imapat]), Arial, and Trebuchet MS. The later two are for web and email.
Also, I do brochures for another product that we distribute and the font that the guy likes me to use is Eurostile. These fonts themselves are all find and dandy, how ever the are all sans-serif, and all sign and poster fonts. (Arial and Trebuchet are okay for body copy on the web)
So now if you are to look at these in paragraph form as you would in print, they don't look so hot.

Click to enlarge

The sample on the left is set in Din with the Helvetica header, and the one on the right is all in Eurostile. They are both set is size 12 font with default leading. These two side by side would definitely make me choose the Din, how ever the shape of the letters on both of them are a bit distracting, making it harder to read as opposed to if it were set in Times or Garamond. Not proper looking for a high end product would you say?

Word to my People

(Click to Enlarge)

This is the banner for one guy's blog about computer graphics. In his bio on the blog he states that he has been studying and researching computer graphics for 15 years and he will never stop learning. The blog is full of different effects that you can do for images, bitmaps, and text. Now what I gather is that he is in the process of designing software that can perform these effects. Some comments he has gotten say things like "Big deal, Photoshop can do this in 2 seconds", but I think I'll cut him some slack. He has the patients to develop and program software for image editing, props to him.

Sadly, based on the banner, it doesn't look like he has looked much into design end of computer graphics. The logo I think is great. I like the idea of the cursor with a brush and pen for fingers and the RGB swatches fit perfectly. One thing that I would try is to try and make it so the cursor is holding a pencil...

The composition of the banner is in need of some help. The "Picture To People" text is very hard to read. The spacing is very awkward and there is way too much white space. I would suggust to keep number of fonts to a minimum. I would use one font for the main title, something very easy to read and understand, and use a second for the sub text, this can be serif. Three different fonts would be the absolute maximum that I would use, but the less the better. If you want something in the subtext to stand out, I suggust making it a little bigger, bolder, add and underline or changing the color.