Logo Design Blog - Corporate Logo Design - Custom Logo Design

Designing a logo isn’t the easiest job in the world. A designer might mean well, his design may make sense to him and he might even convince the business to go with his logo design. But, some logos are just too loud, too ambiguous, too simplistic or just plain bad. Take a look at the logos below and see if you find some of them as offensive as we did.

Too Bright … Too Busy

The logo for the London Olympics is meant to depict the year 2012 in a graffiti inspired format. However, does anyone who has seen the logo actually realize that at first glance? Most people seem to be really confused by the jagged shapes and bright colors. There were reports that animated versions of the logo actually caused epileptic seizures.

If there ever was an award for the most obscure logo design the IRS logo would certainly be in contention for the top prize. To start, does the IRS really need to brand itself at all? Is there some doubt that people may not be aware of their existence? An olive branch, a pair of scales and an eagle are hidden in the logo somewhere. It seems more like something you’d find in a kid’s activity book – “Find the hidden shapes in the puzzle.” Figuring out your taxes could be easier!

Overly Simple

You would think that shelling out a cool $100 million on a marketing campaign would mean having a great logo at the very least wouldn’t you? Well you would be wrong, because that is the approximate amount that Microsoft reportedly spent to promote its new search engine Bing.  Perhaps this logo was the reason that Microsoft sold its interactive agency, Razorfish, in late 2009? After all, they came up with this over stretched graphic, which is widely considered to be the worst logo of 2009.

If you were to read the Arnell Group’s presentation on the new Pepsi logo your reaction would be a definite “Huh?” followed by a resounding “What?” ending on a “Yeah … right!” The logo is supposed to contain some pseudo-scientific babble on the golden ratio, the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon, the Gutenberg Bible, the earth and its magnetic fields, as a matter of fact the entire solar system/universe. Reportedly costing $1,000,000 to develop, does the change in logo justify the cost, especially in the current economic climate?

Really Bad Choices

Being a visual representation, sometimes a logo can be interpreted by an observer in ways that the designer never intended. Then there are logos that are just wrong where the designer really made poor decisions.

The first logo above is for a dance class. At first glance it looks like a male and female figure dancing. But look at the big picture (may need to squint a little) and a very different image emerges. The less said about the second logo (Institute of Oriental Studies), the better, though it was supposed to be an oriental house in front of a setting sun. Hmmm!!

What’s happening in medicine these days!! The first logo is for a dental clinic. The second logo is for a pharmacy. Seem to be some very different forms of medical examination going on here. We found these logos here.

I’m sure you’ll agree that the examples above bear re-examination at the very least. Some of you may agree and others not that these are cheap logo designs. That is the point of art/design in any case – to elicit strong opinions and to get people talking. Perhaps you have some “best of the worst” examples that you would like to share. We’d certainly like to see them.