Logos — Successful and Unsuccessful
What I think is successful:
I feel that the Harley-Davidson Motor Company logo is an example of a successful logo design because it’s not an overly complicated design and uses only four colors (orange, black, white). There’s a clear hierarchy in the text placement: your eye is drawn to the “Harley-Davidson” as it’s in the front and then to the “Motor Company” in the back. It works because of how the text is placed with “Harley-Davidson” in between the two words (Motor and Company), separating them in a way, and therefore showing the order of importance that they’re meant to be read.
The color palette also shows hierarchy. While “Motor Company” is in orange, “Harley-Davidson is in white.” Your eye is drawn to each word individually — straight ahead and then up-and-down — and the text in white is the one you see first, followed by the text in orange. There’s a orange outline around each shape the words are in, breaking up the black background rather than letting it continue unhindered. The orange outline also helps to make the logo look not flat.
Another thing that helps to make the logo not look flat is the use of perspective in “Motor Company.” The text almost conforms to the shape it’s contained in. Motor is in sharp relief, looking as though each syllable is a different perspective while Company, each part of the word also in a different perspective, is pushed upwards almost and rounds to find the edge of the shape it’s in. Harley-Davidson, in comparison, is flat, the shape of its text doesn’t conform to the shape it’s in and that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it provides a nice contrast. Even though the color palette is limited, it works together and compliments each other. If this logo had used more colors, especially vibrant ones, I think it would not be as successful as it is now.
What I think is not successful:
One example of an unsuccessful logo is the revised Starbucks logo (I accept that this might be an unpopular opinion). Why I feel it’s unsuccessful is that, while not much has changed about it, it doesn’t have the same feeling as the logo from 1992. It doesn’t really have the same personality. It’s simpler and while that’s not inherently a bad thing, it doesn’t really work in this case because Starbucks has always — beginning from 1971 up until the recent logo change in 2011 — had the words “Starbucks Coffee” in its logo, as literally part of its logo and to suddenly remove it in place of something simpler in terms of design, it doesn’t feel like it’s the same logo.
The logo’s color palette is really simple: It’s mainly green with maybe some white (from the cup?). There’s no other color. It’s just green and that’s not entirely interesting to look at, especially when the only thing, design-wise, there is is the iconic Starbucks mermaid. In comparison, the old logo from 1992 had black in the color palette and it worked, in conjunction with the white, to break up the overall greenness of the design — which worked to create a visually appealing logo design.
The lack of the brand’s name isn’t necessarily a bad thing — after all you can still recognize the logo as Starbucks — but in this case, removing it ended up making the logo less interesting. The name, the hierarchy it created, the way it curved around the mermaid icon in the 1992 logo, was interesting. It broke up the negative space and I think that’s the biggest issue of the new logo. It’s just the mermaid; there’s nothing to break up that negative space and as a result it becomes a design that goes from being interesting, catching to something rather boring to look at.
