To 99% of the population type is simply a font like Arial typed on the computer and printed out, end of story!
To the designer it is a whole new world where we type geeks get excited by the ascenders and descenders on letters or the slant of the cross stroke. At first my wife found it quite interesting that I could walk past a sign or pick up a magazine and tell her the name of the fonts used, now I don’t say a thing.
Every moment of our lives we are bombarded by icons. These simplistic symbols that tell us exactly which direction to go, what button to push, or that unless you pull over now and add water to the radiator you will soon have a sauna under your bonnet. (I simply disconnected my temperature warning light as it kept coming on, and not only did I have a sauna that any Swede would be proud of, but a rather large expensive lake too!).
Whoever said things would be easier in the digital world! Well they probably would be if everything was digital and although it’s possibly where we are headed…we’re certainly not there yet! Only the other day I was discussing with a colleague the major advances we’ve seen over the last decade.
How many of you have recently grabbed your paper of choice and on shaking it have been showered in brochures selling you everything from the ideal holiday to the latest ‘super specials’ at your local supermarket? Frankly I’m sick of it…but that’s for another blog. What I’m really interested in is how many of them are actually blank!
So you’ve got a flash new logo. It has cleverly defined your corporate culture, your direction and positioned you in both the right market place and the mind of your targeted consumer (either that or you got your brother’s new girlfriend who has a flash new iBook with a desktop publishing program on it, to do it for you in exchange for a cheap bottle of Vodka) nevertheless…you have a logo!
I remember when I was younger (much younger) and I attempted to make a packet cake with a friend of my mine. Now you couldn’t get much easier than a packet cake now could you – or at least you would think!
We managed to miss a vital ingredient…2 eggs. That cake came out of the microwave so hard that even the family dog wouldn’t even eat it!!
Passing the local HBF branch on the weekend, I noticed a change in their branding. The big, bulky, capital letter HBF brand has been replaced with a flowing, lower case version, accompanied by a distinctly feminine and friendly, corporate style.