I love logos. As most people in the commercial creative field do. Hell…there is even a website in which creatives will spend the whole day debating the kerning of the new paypal logo: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/. We love admiring the beauty of them, finding meaning inside their simple(well..sometimes) shells, nitpicking every little detail, ridiculing them(ie. Michael Beirut calling the new UPS logo the "golden combover").
But DON'T ask us to wear one. IF you have ever noticed from any of your friends that work in the creative industry, they will go to painstaking levels to avoid any sort of logo on their clothes. This includes removing stitching, preforming precision surgery to take off labels, and just not buying anything with them on it(especially the one with the horsey on it). Have you ever noticed the look on a creatives face when offered a free t-shirt with pimping a company's logo? It will usually resemble the same look when they found they stepped in a fresh pile of dog poo. I'll admit since reading Naomi Klein's book, No Logo, a few years back that I have been even more aware in what i sport on the billboard of what i choose to wear.
While funny to think of, it raises the question why? If we love logos so much then why do we often keep them at an arms length? Is is a simple question of taste? Is it a representation of a larger question or problem? Is it the natural creative desire to not conform or to be an outsider? Is it a symbol of the awkward bedfellows that business and art often make? Is it a superiority thing in that we are smug about how we are versed in the ways of propaganda, that we are in on the joke that the rest of the population doesn't get? Or are we just in denial to the fact that often no matter how beautiful and meaningful our efforts are, that when it comes down to it, we are often just creating more junk that feeds the consumer monster?
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Excuse me, but i've had a bit too much to think.
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4 comments:
Creatives? Is that what you designer folks refer to yourselves as these days? That's a good one. Duane Michals told me not to call myself an artist last week, so I've been looking for a better word. Hmmm.
Oh my god this is so true. I've used crafty tools with sharp points to remove many a logo stitching from things.
I think it has to do with wearing someone else's brand. We spend all day creating an identity for someone else that we don't want to become walking billboards. William Gibson wrote about this in one of his characters in Pattern Recognition. She would painstakingly remove all logos from her clothing. It's an excellent book by the way if you haven't read it.
There is an exception to this, some brands have an elite status because of their catering TO designers, companies such as Nike and Apple. By allowing designers to customize or create by their products, they aren't subject to the same scrutiny as other brands.
makes me think of Naomi Klein's book,
No Logo
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