Revisit

I visited the well designed MailChimp website today and I noticed that the MailChimp logo now sports the big cheesy grin, which made me wonder how many tweeks this logo has seen over the years.  Being a fan of their designs, I took a look online and found some comments from those in the know, namely the designer and the guy who hired him.

Here they are…

1st Generation Logo

I skipped a couple iterations in between there, but the differences are minor and irrelevant. I mainly changed the nose  because whenever I scaled that horrible, horrible Fireworks file, the 2-dot nostrils would often overlap each other, or spread way apart. Also, if I scaled the logo really big, the hat would come apart. You’d literally see a big giant gap between the brim and the gold badge. Like I said, Fireworks is great for web design, but not-so-great for print.

MailChimp 1st Generation Logos

2nd Generation Logo

The comments about MailChimp being “unprofessional” did not bug me one bit. However, I consider myself a scientist, so I love experiments. I’ll try anything just to see what it does for our business.

That’s when we had the idea to remove the monkey altogether, and change our website to look more “corporate and stodgy.”

MailChimp 2nd Generation Logo

3rd Generation Logo

So I emailed Jon. Turns out Jon is really busy, so we had to wait about 6 months.

6 months pass, Jon is finally available, and I show him the Mario diagram. I also show him my sticky note doodle, and I ask him if he can “do what Nintendo did for Mario, except we want the style and detail from the Firefox logo you did, but modernize the chimp a little so it doesn’t look like we’re trying to stay within the 16-bit websafe color palette or something.”

If that were a mathematical equation, it would look something like this:

The MailChimp Logo Design Equation

MailChimp 3rd Generation Logos

So the “try anything” scientific approach definitely seems to be at work here.  As you can see for yourself, the chimp has gone from leaning forward to upright, back to leaning forward. The 2nd iteration here shows the Mario-esque fist. The 3rd iteration takes the smile to full cheese and adds a piece of mail to the hand. Personally, I never understood why the mail wasn’t in the hand in the first place, but in terms of the new smile, I’m undecided, but I’m sure the folks at MailChimp will let us know eventually.

Original References

New MailChimp Logo By Jon Hicks | September 11th, 2008
Thorough write-up about the design process and design history summarized by MailChimp

Recent Work: MailChimp | September 15th, 2008
Personal design blog entry from logo designer Jon Hicks

If you read my other grocery store design articles, you’ll see that I pay attention when I’m at the grocery store.  When the grocery chain Bloom opened, I went shopping and took my camera and documented some of my observations.

The first thing I noticed was the logo, it was new and fresh and plastered just about everywhere. Some of the pluses included the ability for the logo to be reproduced well in scale from small to large.  Additionally, I like the amount of different applications for which they use it. The problem I think they have is the overuse by repetition.  Repetition certainly has it’s place in good design, but doing so with the logo has to be done carefully.  In this case, I think the repetition choices take the good out and throws in some bad taste.

After looking at the pictures, I invite you to weigh in with your opinion.

Bloom Front Entrance

Bloom Floor Marker

Bloom Produce Signage

Bloom Product Scanners

Bloom Canned Product Labeling

Bloom Plastic Produce/Meat Bag

Bloom Recycle Bin

Bloom Produce Crates

Here’s a number of print pieces I’ve scrounged together…

Bloom Circular

Bloom Circular Page

Bloom Magazine

Bloom Business Card

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If you’ve been around on the web any length of time, you’ve certainly heard or seen Network Solutions in some way, shape, or form.  The company founded the domain registration business in the early nineties and continues to offer web publishing services, even though it no longer retains the monopoly it established.

The new logo and website were designed by The Pappas Group, which gives a scroll through tour of many of the design elements they put together.

Network Solutions has made it’s mark on the web’s young history and likewise I have my own connections with the company.  One of the first offices was built in my hometown, so I actually saw their branding before I even started browsing!  I later worked for the company shortly after the third logo was released in the mid-2000’s.  Having since concluding my employment there, I’m still a customer and received advanced notice of the new design, which made me think of this retrospective.

The new logo adds another style to an already mixed bag, which leaves things wide open for discussion – what do you think?

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Please take another look at this logo and answer the poll.

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The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog

Ever seen that one before?  It’s called a  holoalphabetic sentence or pangram. Translated, this means is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once.  You may have seen them because they are used to test keyboards, typewriters, fonts, etc. to ensure that every character is visible.

For the history of this phrase, you can check out Wikpedia’s reference.

Wikipedia also has a large list of pangrams which I’ve listed partially here:

• Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim
• Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz
• The five boxing wizards jump quickly
• A very bad quack might jinx zippy fowls
• Few quips galvanized the mock jury box
• Watch “Jeopardy!”, Alex Trebek’s fun TV quiz game
• My girl wove six dozen plaid jackets before she quit
• A quick movement of the enemy will jeopardize six gunboats

It has been quite a year for the Washington Capitals hockey organization. Last year the professional franchise created a lot of energy by re-branding its logo, followed by their first appearance in the playoffs in years, where their marketing push of “Rock the Red” took center stage. This year, they one-upped themselves by advancing in the playoffs to the second round. Perhaps next year will produce a cup winning team.

But to the subject matter at hand, their farm clubs, the Hershey Bears from the AHL and the AA affiliate from the ECHL, the South Carolina Stingrays, already grabbed their league’s respective cups  and both did so in dramatic seven game series. Ironically, the Stingrays re-branding preceded their success as well. At the beginning of this season, the team released a new logo design, which features the same iconic stingray, but rendered in a much different way.

Whereas I didn’t really care much for the Capitals logo re-design, I did actually like this one. The Stingrays former logo featured a more cartoon-like style which was/is fairly consistent with the league’s other team logos. From a straight design perspective, the logo is too tight and busy in the way it incorporates the type. I don’t mind cartoony, but the type has to work with it, and in this case, the type makes it harder to assimilate the illustration. As it pertains to the illustration, I don’t care much for the flashing tail. But in terms of tails, it definitely is better than the original rendering.

The original design is very forced as all of the concept building blocks seem to be thrown on the canvas. It includes the state map, the stingray, the hockey stick, and a tail. The tail bothers me because I cannot tell if it’s a tail or a tree. I have a feeling it was intended to be both – the tree being the official state tree, the cabbage palmetto. The state shape has always interfered with how I interpret the shape of the stingray, which seems to get jumbled together forming one shape versus the two.

The new logo designed by The Joe Bosack Graphic Design Co. is much more integrated. As you can see right away, the type has a clear hierarchy with South Carolina on top, Stingrays underneath. The custom type treatment repeats the sharp edge seen throughout the Stingray illustration. The illustration itself is a lot more simple, yet still clearly identifiable. It also reproduces well on a small scale, even though the contrast might not be my first choice with two dark shades. The logo is definitely an improvement and has an aggressive quality which is ideal for hockey!

The secondary logo is a stylized version of the state flag, whereas the second has some simliar elements, adding in the Ravenel Bridge. The logos are cohesive in their styling with the primary logo in a number of ways, although I don’t think you’d be selling to many of these as jerseys of their own.