Another big trademark issue this week:

The Big Apple has a new logo, and Apple says: Drop dead.

At issue is the emblem for New York City’s GreeNYC campaign, which has started to appear around the city on bus shelters, hybrid gasoline-electric taxicabs and even Whole Foods shopping bags.

The GreeNYC logo shows a stylized apple with a stalk and a leaf. It bears a resemblance to Apple’s famous logo — a resemblance Apple says infringes on its trademark. Read more…

A company’s brand is their lively hood. I don’t blame any company for vigorously defending their brand, Apple especially. Apple has gotten to that point in brand development where they don’t even need to write out their name on ads anymore, they just put the icon in the corner and everyone knows who it is. Target does the same thing. So since a little Apple icon is their whole identity, if anyone else out there uses a stylized Apple they’re going to be scrutinized for possibly diluting Apple’s brand.

When you register a trademark, you have to specify in which class or industry you will be using it to conduct business. You’d specify something like computers, food & beverage, telecommunications, etc. If someone uses a similar name or logo in a class where your trademark isn’t registered, you have a great case. If they aren’t in your industry or class, it’s a lot more difficult to prove dilution. NYC doesn’t make computers, and Apple doesn’t make cities. Right? Case closed?

Unfortunately, not in this case. NYC will probably get to use their Apple, it’s really not that similar. But if they let one Apple through without saying anything, they have to let all of them through. They need to get it down on paper why this one is isn’t an issue, just to ensure no precedent is set that will work against them in a more legitimate claim in the future.

So last week Deutsche Telekom, owners of the global T-Mobile brand, sent Engadget a late birthday present: a hand-delivered letter direct from their German legal department requesting the prompt discontinuation of the use of the color magenta on Engadget Mobile. Yep, seriously. Read more…

T-Mobile, old buddy. Listen, you gotta pick your fights. UPS Brown? I would sue for UPS Brown. Marlboro Red? Oh, Absolutely. Sue for Marlboro Red. Owens Corning Pink? (Think fiberglass insulation, only one company can make it pink.) Yeah, Owens Corning Pink is definitely worth it. But T-Mobile Magenta? Is T-Mobile Magenta really worth a lawsuit? Even if we were to falsely assume that there are only 256 colors in the world, I would just let T-Mobile Magenta go. Does anybody like Magenta? Suing for a color? Brilliant. Suing for Magenta? Come on… Maybe if it were Magenta’s evil twin sister, Rhodamine Red, this would be a different story.

I kid around but actually T-Mobile’s sometimes excessive use of Magenta is just as widely recognizable as UPS’s sometimes excessive use of the color brown. Like UPS’s use of Brown, it stands out in their industry and they have a right to protect that. At this point, T-Mobile’s unique image would ultimately become diluted and tarnished if others not associated with T-Mobile were allowed to actively use Magenta.

The complaint against Engadget is plausible. It would be impossible to get away with saying that the color Magenta isn’t widely recognized as an integral part of T-Mobile’s brand. Trademarking a color may seem silly, but it’s certainly a protection under trademark law. I’ll mention UPS Brown once again. It’s trademarked. A candy bar company can use UPS Brown all they want, but if FedEx decided to start painting their trucks UPS Brown, they’d be in a heap of trouble.

(Note: While I’m on the UPS topic, look back on my furious posting about the UPS logo “modernization.”)

The argument in many places across the web is that EngadgeT-Mobile doesn’t create confusion or dilution because EngadgeT-Mobile doesn’t sell wireless phones, devices, or wireless service. It’s really not that simple. The site is a powerful commentator on the wireless industry that profits off consumers in that industry, so by using the elements (colors) of T-Mobile it could be argued that they are showing their website is endorsed by T-Mobile.

It’s easy to have sympathy for the little guy when they are faced with a large corporation, a corporation which I’m sure countless people hate because of billing errors, late fees, and spotty service. Set aside your differences with T-Mobile, and let’s review just what Engadget really is. This is not a little blog with only a couple dozen followers, it’s one of the top 2 or 3 tech blogs out there. The writers on the site make a living off of it, this isn’t their hobby. They make a profit off of advertising dollars. Now they’re specifically profiting in the cell phone industry, and that’s why T-Mobile is definitely not out of line asking them to stop using the color.

By the way, from the T-Mobile website:

T-MOBILE, the T-MOBILE logo, T-ZONES, the T-ZONES design, the HOTSPOT design, T-MOBILE MDA, T-MOBILE SDA, T-MOBILEWEB, the WORLDCLASS logo, the “digits” design, the T-MOBILE acoustic logo, and the color magenta are registered and/or unregistered trademarks of Deutsche Telekom AG in the US and/or other countries.

By the way, I totally own the hex color #00467D. So don’t use it.

When things work well, we see them in a new light. They’ll become even more attractive over time. We’ll continue to increase the value of things as they continue to work well and eventually, we’ll attribute all sorts of things to them that we wouldn’t have otherwise. We’ll think it looks great and that the people selling it are good, credible people. We’ll want to buy things from them again.

Our first reaction to something, usually a superficial one based solely on appearance, changes almost immediately upon use. If it doesn’t work well, then it really doesn’t matter how impressive your graphic design or industrial design was.

So is it a waste of time for a designer to do work for a product that isn’t any good? First, I suppose you have to determine what makes a product bad. There are numerous things, but usually it’s a case of quality being compromised so that they can be made cheaper. Businesses figure that marketing can fix that problem by making the products seem a lot better than they actually are through image manipulation & trendy graphic design. Well, I personally don’t think that’s good business.

I think there has to be more collaboration between the design and the product; meaning that the product should feature the same equality in its use as it does in its appearance through industrial design and graphic design. All it really comes down to is businesses should be more honest about what they’re selling.

It’s a frustrating problem. Sometimes the product will be so awful you can’t even take a good photograph of it for your ads. I often find myself feeling very sorry for professional product photographers. Some products are so bad that you have to fool people by manipulating the photos so much that it ends up looking like almost something entirely different. The product you’re now portraying in your ads after your extensive photoshopping ends up not being the one you’re selling at all. Is that deceptive? Is it wrong?

Well, companies do it all the time. Most photography we see of food isn’t actually real food, for example. Not only does that really upset the consumer when they find out that they’re being fooled like that, it really makes what the graphic designers and photographers did completely pointless. I’m sure you can probably relate when I say that my first experience with that feeling of advertising deception was as a young child. I had just received my hamburger, expecting the big juicy burger up on the menu, but instead I received a burger that was half the size and half as appetizing as what I saw on the menu.

If the product you’re marketing turns out to not be quite like the great product you advertised, then the graphics are awful too and not only did the company fail, but so did the graphic artist. The graphic artist lied, and dissapointed the customer. Yeah, the company may have sold one product thanks to the good graphics. Yes, you got the customer in the door, but you’re probably not going to see repeat business. Company’s will rarely admit this failure is the product’s fault, though - they’ll blame it on the marketing.

I just wish things could be sold and marketed as honestly as possible. If only it were that simple.

Yeah, it’s been quiet around here lately. Plenty to write about, just haven’t found a good enough way to write it. I’ve been very critical of myself lately, to the point where I can’t even write a sentence without hating every word of it. I get that way sometimes. Why? I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Oh allright then I’ll try…

I had been having some nagging feelings about my design work recently. I’m pretty sure I’ve just been experiencing a bit of a burn-out, as the past few weeks have been very busy and stressful. I started feeling like the design work I was doing was not really touching anyone on the kind of level I would like. I’d get to the point where I would feel like the work was completely selfish and irrelevant, only touching people on a very superficial level. But I suppose that’s the nature of marketing design. If I wanted to touch people on some truly deep and profound level I’d probably have to hightail to Paris and mingle with the “real” artsy types. I know what would happen, I’d come running back after winding up painting road signs.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I’m doing. I’m just in a rut. It happens. After a while, the batteries have to be changed. So lately I’ve been looking everywhere for some sort of seeds of artistic revolution. I’ve been looking for something to convince me that my designs are still worth making and looking at, that they aren’t as irrelevant and silly as I fear.

Initially I thought that what I needed was some time and space to think. I thought that maybe I just needed more time to be able to focus on my personal life, without all the distracting clutter of marketing bottom lines and mission statements. But I need to save that for later. It’s way too early in the game for a time out.

The fundamental question for me isn’t how do I as graphic artist touch the world, but how the world touches me as a graphic artist, and how that shows up in my work. There’s certainly more to this story, and there are all kinds of related tangents, but I’m afraid I’ve gone on too long already. The rest will likely come out another day. For now, I’m not really going to change anything, I just need to relax and look at things in a more positive way. It gets tough sometimes to overcome this perpetual state of angst that I seem to be in.

Thank you as always for your kind attention, and please let me know if you’d like me to clarify, recant, or feel embarrassed about anything. See-ya later!

Once again, I have two cases of major and highly recognized companies changing their corporate identity systems. In this post I had written about UPS and AT&T changing their logos, and as you may recall both new logos were losers in my opinion. Now we have Kodak and Intel on the table making the change, and while one isn’t too bad, the other is a nightmare.

Let’s start with the nightmare - Kodak. This is the worst face-lift I have ever seen on a logo. Kodak has taken their well known logo, which I’ll agree needed a little updating, and they’ve reduced it to what you see below. It’s some kind of ugly russian futurist style thing. I’m not sure entirely what they were trying to accomplish here, but if it was an attempt to modernize it they have truly failed at that. In fact, it looks like it’s from the same era as the original, just not as good. The old logo at least had a very clear connection with photography.

The only thing this new Kodak logo has going for it is that the “d” in the logo looks like half of a film roll that would have been used in those old instamatic cameras. The worst part is that they likely spent an unbelievable amount of money on this redesign. I’m still technically a junior level graphic designer, and I could have come up with thirty logos for Kodak that are ten times better than this. They should show us the rejects. I’d be interested in what they turned down for this.

Now, Intel. Not too bad, it’s bearable. But wow, a swirlie thing around the logo? That was old and busted back in 1989, when Ameritech changed their logo. I think Intel might be doing themselves a bit of a disservice with this logo. The sunken “e” was exceptionally iconic and unique to the Intel brand.

The more I look at new logos like Intel’s and Kodak’s and compare them to AT&T’s new logo the more I actually begin to like AT&T’s new logo, even though it replaces such a great original. You see, minimalistic curves and swishes with sharp edges are getting to be somewhat annoying when every single company on the face of the earth is trying to use them.

Man, I sure can be negative about these things can’t I? Why can’t I say something good about something for a change, you wonder? Well, I can. I will say that I like what Sprint/Nextel has done with their combined logo. I’ve always liked the whole “pin drop” clarity concept and think it’s communicated really well in the new Sprint logo’s illustration. The yellow and black colors they took from Nextelwork really well for a tech/communications company, the colors are high-tech and commanding. They did a great job, especially since they were dealing with the merger of two very large companies. One is so large, it’s the title sponsor of a major sport: NASCAR.

But it seems that NASCAR fans shouldn’t get too used to the new “Nextel Cup” name that titles NASCAR’s top series. Nextel Cup replaced the Winston Cup name in 2004 when Nextel purchased the naming rights. The “Nextel Cup Series” name is reportedly continuing until the end of the 2006 season, but we can expect a name change for 2007. It will likely be something like Sprint Cup, as Sprint remains the main corporate name, and Nextel will just be a sub-brand. (Source)

NASCAR has a right to approve or reject any name change that could result from the merger between Nextel and Sprint. The 10-year contract Nextel signed also limits how many times they can change the name. I can see how NASCAR would have an interest in such a thing, as certain names might not test well with fans and may effect the sport’s marketing. (Source)

Overall, this trend of modernizing corporate logos, whether it’s UPS, AT&T, Kodak, Intel, or whoever else decides to do it next, it’s been very disappointing so far. Sometimes minimal works, but I feel like it’s going a bit too far. No wonder so many ad execs and corporate types have no respect for graphic design anymore. Apparently they can get what they want out of a logo at one of those $75 online logo factories. It’s very, very disappointing.

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