I don’t mean here the kind of clueless logos that look stupid or obscene, although, Og knows, there are plenty of those.
a logo ought to be simple, stark, and aesthetically pleasing and ought to be immediately understandable, or at least comprehensible with a minimum of effort. If you come up with a logo that is a.) ugly and b.) incomprehensible, then you have failed. People will scratch their heads and then shake them as they contemplate the disaster that is the symbol of your company. People will remember your company, but not in a good way.
One example of this, which I have brought up in the past, was the logo for the Chessie System, a railroad holding company that got its name fom one of its constituents, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. When I first saw a railroad car with its logo, I thought it was supposed to be a perfect yellow circle fro which some of the paint had blistered and cracked:
When I saw more cars with exactly the same thing on them, I realized that this weird shape was intentional. It clearly made a stylized letter “C”, but what the hell was that weird silhouette within? It looked like a weirdly misshapen cat, with one normal ear and the other pared down to a wisp, one paw reaching forward as if to guide the poor mutilated creature on its way.
And I saw it every day, since their railroad cars brought in fuel for the university power plant. What the hell was that misshapen creature? It wasn’t until years later, with the Internet as a tool, that I learned the answer. The image was derived from this image from their old ads:
Yes, it’s a sleeping kitten, covered with a blanket, one paw outside the covers. The implication is that you’ll “sleep like a kitten” on one of their passenger cars (although not in a coal car). It makes perfect sense – if you already know their old ads. Otherwise, it’s a mutant house pet.
There’s a similarly weird logo on a building’s sign that we pass continually going up route 95 north of Boston. It’s pink, and looks kind of like one of those ribbon twists that people put on the back of their cars to show solidarity with some cause, kind of like this Cancer Awareness one:
http://sz-wholesale.com/uploadFiles/Product_04/Breast-Cancer-Awareness-Magnetic-Ribbon-SZ131004.jpg
Only it doesn’t look like a clear image of a ribbon twist, as if drawn by a four year old, or an incompetent artist. It looked like it might be a misshapen squid, with some tentacles hidden (“Sleep like a squid”?). Since it was , by its own admission, a fertility clinic, and the thing was pink, I thought it might be some attempt to picture some portion of a woman’s reproductive system, like half a uterus or something:
well, I sought them out on the internet, and when I saw their logo on the screen, it was immediately obvious. It wasn’t in pink, as the road sign was, and there were features drawn in with black that made the intent unmistakable. But I never would have guessed from the billboard:
[spoiler]
http://www.resolve.org/assets/images/freedom-fertility-logo.jpg
It’s a woman with her hands encircled over her head. There’s possibly a partner behind her, but, if so, that person has no legs showing. The ends of the ribbon/tentacles of the squid are the lady’s legs and feet. I swear that none of the fine detail is there on the sign visible from the road.[/spoiler]
