Cincinnati recently unveiled it's new logo designed by LPK for a cool $75k paid by Macy's.
I don't terribly dislike it. I like the colors - city blue, a light blue & green. It screams water, earth, air, clarity & transparency. The shape, however, is pretty uninspirational. A torus with a wedge knocked out of it.
What bothers me is it's functionality. It looks great on white but the vignetted edges & goofy highlights & shadows are gonna be hell to reproduce on other colors, patterns & images.
It won't photocopy or fax well.
You can't just stick it on a photo.
Simple outlining still has issues with the vignetted edges.
It does appear to have a shape and a 3Dness to it. this has potential, especially with the transparency thing going on.
Static
Animated
poorly
The shape still needs masking & stuff for the soft edges. Hopefully LPK has supplied masks, grayscales & hell, even a 3d model (for $75k) so the city can get the widest range of uses out of this thing.
Fishwrap story here.
2 comments:
I'm assuming that the city has a staff designer who can manage most of these issues. But, you're right that it's not the most user-friendly logo as far as things like, say, Powerpoint presentations, which are generally created by non-designers.
The thing that really irks me about the logo is that it appears to be three colors, which seems unnecessarily expensive for printing business cards, vehicle graphics, and whatever else it'll be used for. I'm wondering if there's another version out there that's more budget-friendly.
On that same point, I wonder if there's a version that's appropriate for faxing and other one-color applications. I would be astounded if there weren't.
Still, I'm a bit surprised that the client's fiscal situation seems not to have been considered in the design.
There usually is a black & white version & a lot of business cards are printed 4 color process anyway.
I don't know what goes into decals & that sort of thing. Fortunately a lot of city vehicles are white. :-)
You are absolutely right about the Powerpoint thing.
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