Why are these logos interchangeable?
Now is the best time to be a forger. Only 10 years ago if you’d wanted to counterfeit Burberry or Yves Saint Laurent you would have grappled with mimicking their distinctive logos. Today no such struggle exists.
The fonts Burberry and Saint Laurent have opted for now look as if they’ve been suggested as the standard to accountants to make sure the quarterly report is readable to an aging chairman. This begs the question, if you’re going to trade a distinctive brand identity for a dull logo what will you get in return?
One answer was provided by Google. They apparently adopted their Sans-Serif logo because it was easier to animate, easier to read and more mobile friendly. From a UX perspective there were valid reasons to change it. However, their employees told me that they responded by hoarding merchandise that had the old logo on it.
If your company wishes to simplify their logo, it should serve customer needs not work against business interests. What can look like a brilliant innovation in the short-term can dilute brand identity in the long term and create tenuous lawsuits.
An Osaka based entrepreneur, Nobuaki Kurokawa, registered a “CUGGL” logo that looked identical to the Gucci one. When Gucci picked up on this and tried to present a claim to the Japanese Patent Office, the Japanese Patent Office were unable to find a distinguishing feature the logo infringed on and rejected their claim that Kurokawa had used their trademark for malicious intent.
Though Kurokawa may have been wrong, extreme simplification has left many logos interchangeable. Yet, good design can be simple without sacrificing a company’s unique identity. Apple, Nike and even Baskin Robbins have all simplified their logos, but retained what makes them unique whether that be a swoosh, an apple, or a distinctive shade of pink.
Logos, in fact, are incredibly powerful in moulding brand perceptions. A 2008 study from Duke University found that people experienced higher levels of creativity after looking at the Apple logo. Wharton professor Americus Reed similarly studied the impact of changing taglines at Adolph Coors brewing company.
When Coors changed the tagline on its beer from “Banquet Beer” to “Original Draft” in 1988 customers wrote to the company complaining about the new taste. Although the beer was unaltered Reed observed: “That label change created the perception the product had changed — when it had not.”. To make your brand interchangeable with another will alter perceptions of your product and is potentially perilous.
As Radek Sienkewicz put it, it looks as if tech and fashion companies “decided to use the services of one designer, and not a particularly inventive one at that”. Whatever industry you’re in, a logo is an opportunity to convey what your brand is and who you serve. By trying to please everybody you can end up pleasing nobody.
To conclude, the homogeneity of logos shows what happens when decisions are made by committee and not by customers. Like plastic surgery, logo design to flatten and reshape can work, but also runs the risk of creating a freakish result that nobody aspired to leaving you with no distinct identity.
If you’re interested in learning more about design, why not register for our upcoming course, ‘Human Centered Design’, made in collaboration with Parsons School of Design.
For more than a century, Parsons has been a leading provider of design education to students from all over the world. Located in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village, this famous institution is ranked the no.1 design school in the U.S. and a top-ranked school globally.
