Logo Designing 101 – Is My Logo Inappropriate?
September 28, 2009 | Thoughts & Words By Sneh Roy | 8 Comments
There comes a time in every logo designer’s life when he has to design a mark with a slightly rounded, rectangular shape. Uh-oh! And thus opens a can of very phallic worms that wriggle through the sludge of words like "inappropriate", "sexual" and "eroticism". Now when that happens, you can do one of two things. You can either completely ignore the critiques thinking "I don’t see it! so what if a few people see it? That doesn’t justify me changing my design." or you can take them constructively and try to analyze and investigate the design in more depth. Is it really hinting at something inappropriate? 90% of the time it is just a matter of perception. Some people just see things a certain way whereas to others, the perception might be totally different.
So you made a logo with the utmost care and it turned out to be great except a part of it looked inappropriate to a few people. If your client loves it, and the "inappropriateness" is just a perceptive or opinion thing and not a glaring "oops", then by all means keep it. If the logo is a personal project or a design exercise, I would strongly recommend trying to rework the part that might unleash those phallic worms to a satisfactory degree.
The upside of this problem if you do manage to successfully remove any sexual connotations, is that you have learnt something new and your logo will no longer be controversial or inappropriate. The problem here is that there are just so many objects and theories in this world that might remind people of things they are not supposed to be thinking of while looking at that logo. It has happened to me on two occasions, thankfully both were just practice logos and not client work. But it happened nevertheless.
CASE 1 – FIRERI LOGO
In the Fireri logo, the neck of the character was intended to be a match that spouted a flame head. To my unsuspecting eyes, it seemed normal and I loved how it turned out. But after some critique and feedback, I could see how the neck and body could be mistaken for a phallic shape and hence impart an inappropriate tone to the logo. I wanted the logo to still perform great in one color so I tweaked the match to look more like a match and less like a robot-joint body part. By slightly changing the color of the stem, the "match" was instantly well defined and any sexual references were done away with. Mind you, it might still hold that first impression for people, but you just can’t please everybody. One man’s design is another man’s eyesore.
CASE 2 – CONVERGEAN LOGO
In the Convergean logo, the idea was to symbolize "convergence", a coming together of information nodes via very fluid channels. A lot of time was spent developing this concept and I settled for the one you see in the image. It was well received except for a few people it symbolized the sperm and egg scenario. Very legit critiques in my opinion. So I started deconstructing the logo. If I made the "tails" of the nodes straight, that would fix the problem but I would also lose the fluidity and motion in the logo. If I made the round nodal points hollow circles, the logo became instantly busier. In the end after weighing the pros and cons, I decided to leave the logo as it was because it still conveyed beautifully what I wanted it to and the risk of it appearing inappropriate was very small compared to what I would lose in terms of "message conveyance" if I were to change it.
To sum up The Great Phallic Debate, there will always be people who’ll tell you that bits and parts of your logo look like bits and parts of the body or actions that you don’t want to be a part of your logo. But you have to use your design sense and judge the validity of claims like that before you scrap your design and start over or modify a part of it. In any case, always try to look at your logo from every perspective you can find out there.
Have you had any of your logos branded by the inappropriate phallic worm? Did you do anything about it? Leave us a comment and share your story.
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Very nice write up and the imagery the logos express were helpful. I also like the fact that you kept convergean as is. It’s a well spoken design!
Sadly, I feel the eroticism concept will always be around. Mostly, because of the idea that we know sex sells. We tend to look for a contrary view on brands because we may feel we’re supposed to see sexiness. I have run across this issue with logos and wording.
One such occasion that is fresh in my mind, a client of mine owned several grocery shops and delis. He had some shirts printed up, with a family oriented sandwich guy logo. He had cartoon eyes, mouth, legs, arms and feet; including a word bubble saying “Eat me at [clients grocer / deli location]. The gentleman had the items there for years with no intention whatsoever of spreading the ideas that may come to mind. Though it happened, one day a woman bought some for her two children. Only to come back the next day and slam the owner for a inappropriate phrases and ideas.
Moral of the story, despite having all good intentions and never thinking eroticism there will always be a minority whom see beyond excellence or innocence. Where does the Freudian slip occur, is it the artist, client or eye of the beholder? I guess my main point is that these issues go beyond just eye candy and logos. It’s in written branding and sounds.
Thanks for the post! ~Dwyndal
So true Dwyndal, phrases or written words in branding especially have the risk of sounding inappropriate to some. Things used to be much simpler, much more innocent back in the days. With the explosion of media and commercialism and the invention of newer things and ideas, the way we perceive things is so much different today than it was for our previous generations.
Thanks for stopping by
Convergean is wonderful! Wouldn’t change a thing.
You know my thoughts on Fireri. If it were like Convergean which works in spite of and because of the sperm & egg image (it’s convergence no matter how you look at it), it would be another thing. Unfortunately Fireri doesn’t clearly represent a flame creature. Don’t know if I’m expressing that well.
Trish
Thanks Trish. Yes I know and I did take your concerns into consideration. That is exactly what I talk about here, to take all critiques into consideration, whether you see it yourself or not. If others are seeing something wrong, chances are that more people might have similar views
Really your work is Amazing. I liked your work. i impress your logo design collection.