another setback for "serious" design
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- hans_glib
From today's Times:
"Then there was the now familiar logo, the grinning pig in a space helmet, accompanied by the moon. The branding exercise cost about £200."
"Nowadays, Moonpig has its own factory in Guernsey, from which the cards are posted, and trucks, suitable for the island’s narrow lanes, to ship them. A filing at Companies House last week showed that in the 2008-09 financial year, sales of £20.9 million translated into profits of £6.7 million, a healthy margin for a retail business."
Full article:
http://business.timesonline.co.u…
- Bluejam0
"Often the best design, the most important design, takes place outside the profession,where this is still a true vernacular. A non-corporate, non-designed vernacular. Vernacular is slang, a language invented rather than taught. Vernacular design is visual slang. More than that, it’s design that’s so familiar that we don’t really see it. Seeing the vernacular is seeing the invisible. It is looking at something commonplace— a yellow pencil, a metal folding chair— and falling in love. Vernacular design is so clear and simple that it seems to be from another time. Often it is. Vernacular design happens when a small business hires the local sign painter, print shop, or commercial artist to take care of its design needs. Vernacular design happens when a business takes care of its own design needs. Appreciation of this sort of design shouldn’t be confused with nostalgia, because the vernacular isn’t a bygone era or a style that can be celebrated or revived. Rather it’s a process, a straightforward one, that creates work which has an unfiltered, emotional quality. These designs are some person’s, some regular human being’s, idea of how to communicate— how to say,
“This is a company that sells shipping supples.”
“This is a store that sells sausages.”It is the unscientific but clear way to say,
“This is a beauty salon,” or
“This is a bottle of soda.”The vernacular is designed as if design were a regular thing to do, and not the sacred mission of an elite professional class. It’s design that hasn’t been ordered and purified by the methods of trained practitioners. It’s communication without the strategy, marketing, or the proprietary quantitative research. And that’s what’s good about it."
Tibor Kalman
- Horp0
Personally I don't see 'vernacular' design as being the opposite of 'serious' design. Vernacular design is essential to counter the global homogenised conclusion to rigorous design that would hope to impose a restrictive set of rules without exception, across the board.
Good, well crafted vernacular style solutions are as important as good, well crafted 'serious' (modernist, uniform, communication and legibility led) design solutions. Serious design needs rich localised vernacular grit in the mix to stop everything becoming a single bland paste of efficient but monotonous visual slurry. The world is not a modern european international airport.
- Horp0
Personally I don't see 'vernacular' design as being the opposite of 'serious' design. Vernacular design is essential to counter the global homogenised conclusion to rigorous design that would hope to impose a restrictive set of rules without exception, across the board.
Good, well crafted vernacular style solutions are as important as good, well crafted 'serious' (modernist, uniform, communication and legibility led) design solutions. Serious design needs rich localised vernacular grit in the mix to stop everything becoming a single bland paste of efficient but monotonous visual slurry. The world is not a modern european international airport.
- I corrected some spelling in this one here.Horp
- I agree with Horp and don't like the pigjimbojones
- jimbojones0
The branding exercise cost about £200 translated into profits of £6.7 million
- hans_glib0
It's not so much the logo I was commenting on, more the fact that stories like this will make it harder to convince business of the value of design. When you can build a multi-million pound business with a £200 logo, why bother to spend any more?
How do you answer the question "Just how much value does "serious" design really add?" We can prattle on all we like about the need for Branding as opposed to a £200 logo, but companies such as moonpig surely undermine the argument.
- I think it's the closing jingle in the ads - Mo–on Pig!Amicus
- How much did Nike pay for the swoosh?TheBlueOne
- jimbojones0
It's all fine till the design they get for $200 is crap. If it gets better, it will become a problem.
- ukit0
Well OK, but this is hardly the only example of a successful company that did a logo for cheap.
"In 1998 Sergey Brin created a computerized version of the Google letters using the free graphics program GIMP after learning how to use it. "
WPP in their round up this past year valued the Google brand at $100 billion and ranked as the most valuable in the world.
- hans_glib0
so why pay for "serious" design at all, then?
- jimbojones0
The logo Brin created is not the one they use now, they aknowledged the importance of branding and went to a designer. Too bad it's still crap.
Anyway, if the client wants to spend on his ID less money than he'd spend on good shoes, power to him. More people would see his ID than his shoes.
- Horp0
This kind of thing has always happened. Its not a new phenomenon that we should all suddenly fear. I bet someone quotes the Nike logo before page 2 appears.
A successful company is not dependent on good design and it never has been. The design industry is increasingly guilty of believing its own ambitious sales hype. Good design is a way to make companies more efficient, more consistent, more presentable, more understandable, more helpful. A bad company will not survive just because it has a decent logo and guidelines. Similarly a good company will not wither just because it has a badly drawn pig in a space helmet.
Lets be honest, any time now Moonpig will receive a sharper, more 'stylish', more designy looking evolution of their logo courtesy of some hip young branding agency who pursuades them it could be done better, but it will still be a pig in a space helmet because the idea is integral to the company and the spirit of the company. All that will change is that it will be depicted using lines, colours and compositional tweaks that the average design will consider to be 'better' than what they have.
*emails moodboard pdf to Moonpig.
- jimbojones0
Also, a great logo doesn't guarantee any success just as a crappy logo won't necessary ruin the company.
- Nightshade0
"Motor insurance group Admiral is in talks to sell its online price comparison site Confused.com for up to £700m after receiving several approaches for the business from a number of buyers."
At least they changed the typeface... it used to be Comic Sans...
- ukit0
Part of it is simply accidental because of the DIY nature of a lot of these companies. Like a band who couldn't afford decent equipment, they couldn't afford to pay for a professional design and marketing agency, so they just didn't - just like they couldn't get a loan from a bank of whatever. The professional logo and the loan might have helped - or not - who knows. We're talking a few web companies that have really succeeded out of tens of thousands that failed.
But there is also an element of branding paying for its own use and abuse over the years. Companies used professional-looking design and marketing for so long to sell us overpriced things we didn't need that eventually I think a certain level of backlash developed towards things that look too slick and branded. So there's kind of a perverse sense of pride that a lot of these companies, if you listen to someone like Craig from Craigslist, have in terms of their lack of branding or ugliness depending on your point of view.
- moth0
I think the moonpig logo is perfectly fine given their target demographic and product. They sell greetings cards for ffs.... which are tacky and under-designed by nature.
- but it's not well crafted at all. not only bad style, but also bad techniquejimbojones
- Morning_star0
>ukit - I agree. The confused logo for instance can be disected and thrown to the four winds by any and all designers - it is not a good logo in isolation. BUT, the logo is an integral asset of the company, it communicates with the right type of people and has been integral in the success of confused.com. Same with MoonPig, it's done it's job admirably and one could argue that it's 'amatuer' feel is an integral part of it's success - it's inclusive, not exclusive - customers can relate.
- Amicus0
I always thought it was a mini pigs head stuck in a light bulb.
Don't they sell crappy cards. If so a crappy logo, will appeal to enough people. God knows, a lot of people have crappy taste. I mean, how often have you complained about the clients wife making the (crappy) decisions?
- Salarrue0
"Austin Manifold wrote:
Greetings cards are a waste of money and a waste of a tree.
I never buy them, never send them, and never encourage others to send them to me."
- lukus_W0
Craft, aesthetics and skill are something that only people who appreciate design care about. For a long while marketers' needs and designers' interests were aligned, and in many cases they'll stay aligned; but in some instances bad design can probably be seen as a valuable marketing commodity.
It's a tonic to the slick, knowing brand campaigns that the public have grown up with.. it signifies a difference and it's non-threatening to certain sectors of the market.
I blame purple ronnie for this cultural shift ...
