Arched Type Design

I figure since this is the first post for this blog, I would write a quick summery of what I would like it to be all about. In the past few years I have gone from fine arts to design to comics to history. One thing that I’ve noticed in all of these fields is that there are a lot of really good artists out there and a lot of people who think they are really good artists. Now, I don’t want to point any fingers, cause if I did that, I would spend the entire day pointing at myself, but what I do want to do is highlight some of the most common mistakes amateur’s and professionals alike make on occasion. More importantly, I would like to remind people what you shouldn’t ask your designer to do, cause it will just make them angry.

Along with my rants, I would like to include some tips, tricks, and examples of all of the great work out there.

Today I will start the ball rolling with Logos. They are everywhere, some are great some are not so great, but all of them have a purpose, and that’s to make the casual observer think of your product just my seeing your logo.

Now, you can make a logo be anything you want, from a simple word mark, to a complex image or even a mix of the two. The thing that I get asked to do most, and that which caused me to create this blog, is to arch type. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve seen it before. That’s probably why so many people thinks it looks good; it’s familiar. Now I’m not saying that making text wrap around some object is a bad thing necessarily, but it has to be done really well to work, and you have to have a good reason for doing it.

Take for instance this quick logo I did up:

Now you may be saying to yourself, ‘What’s wrong with this? It seems perfectly fine to me.” Or worse, “Starbucks does it so why can’t I?”

First of all, it’s over done, and you do not want your logo to look like a hundred other things out there. You want it to be new, fresh and interesting. Secondly, there’s no reason for you to arc that type. It would read better if it was flat, and the image you’re making the center of attention is not really very important. You want people to remember “Arched Type” not necessarily “2008.” Finally, in logos like Starbucks, the type part of the design, but not the main part of the design. It works well as a whole, but take out the image in the middle, and you have a fairly dull design.

So next time you are hiring someone to design a logo, please refrain from asking for arched type. Unless the product or service you are trying to sell is round, than it’s just not necessary, and incredibly irritating.