Look-alike Logos

I went to a fundraising event the other night and, on arrival at the hotel, immediately noticed that the hotel's logo was very similar to a logo project I'd worked on during the 80's for Ektelon, a racquetball and tennis company. (Just to be clear, I was on the client side at Ektelon -- the agency of record was The Phillips Organisation). Here are the two logos:

Which led me to find other logos that have that 3-part flame look to them. In order they are the Epilepsy Foundation, Seagrave Fire Apparatus and Camp Fire Girls.

Then I found an interesting article on the same subject with some great examples: When logos look alike . It's from the fun and educational website, LogoDesignLove.

Clearly, if you are involved with logo design, it becomes more difficult to come up with original ideas given the heavy proliferation of graphic communications, clipart and software that makes designing a lot easier than it was years ago. It pays search the web just to be sure you aren't copping something too closely. :-) Google Image Search can be used to find similar images but it doesn't always work on graphic files. There may be other resources out there. Let us know if you find something interesting!

Disclaimer: Logos above are copyright their respective holders and our use of them is purely educational.

Comments (0) 10.19.2009. 15:01

What consumers want

Joseph Pine offers an interesting viewpoint on what's driving (or should be driving) future markets in the scramble for consumer dollars. It's a video from a 2004 presentation at TED. Many of the things he talked about then, like Starbucks ability to sell 15¢ worth of coffee for $2.50, have come to fruition today. Agree or disagree, it's food for thought.

Comments (0) 08.06.2009. 12:03

Staples, websites and Flash

Is it just me or is OK to consider Flash the scourge of the interwebs? I just spent 10 minutes trying to navigate Staples (the office supply folks) updated website and am hereby pronouncing it unusable. Let's start with the really awful and move to the less awful.

Online version of print ad
This is, to use a Twitter term, a complete and total failwhale. Once you go into this Flashed-out zoomy, flippy, scrolly, rollover driven hell, there's no escaping. You can't get back to Staples regular website (easily), the add to cart feature doesn't carry to your regular Staples page and you can't view detailed specifications or reviews on any of the products. Maybe the online print ad is really hosted by Office Depot and they don't want you to buy anything. Whoever designed this system should be sent back to HTML 1.0 school.

Don't click on the Easy Button!
If you do, you end up in another Flash-driven subsite hell. Why does anyone think a glowing, rotating, panning, scrolling text Easy Button page with no clear logical links to anywhere is going to make me want to install something? And you are stuck on this page forever. Try clicking "Home". You'd expect it to go to Staple's home page. Well you'd be wrong. It restarts the Easy Button Flash crap all over. I'm calling this Web -2.0. Try it yourself.

Staples Easy Button

Changes stores, lose cart.
And my last little peeve. I realized after sticking a couple items in my shopping cart, that the store location was pointing to a Staples 20 miles from me. So I clicked on change store location. Poof, cart goes bye-bye. Yet another failure.

OK end of short rant. What do you think?

Comments (0) 06.05.2009. 13:56