Author: njunker

Color may just be one of the single most subjective things out there. If you’re in a room full of people and ask them for their favorite color, you’d be hard pressed to find more than one or two people whose favorites are the same color for the same reason. Despite this, there seems to be something hard-coded into our cultural DNA to have different emotional responses to different colors. For example, a danger warning will probably feel a lot more urgent if it was bright red as opposed to, say, sky blue. Chapter 4 of Paul Zelanski and Mary Pat Fisher’s book Color outlines some of the various effects color has on people. All this is to say, color will mean different things to different people, but there are a few baseline rules that are handy to follow, such as red being a much more in-your-face, loud, and urgent color than a meek dark blue.

Some designs use color in really intelligent and creative ways. Ever wonder why so many fast-food chains have red and yellow logos? It’s because those are the colors that will catch your attention first when driving, when you don’t have a lot of time to carefully look at the signs passing by. A store such as Whole Foods, on the other hand, uses green in its logo as a subtle way to drive home the whole “you’re making a healthy choice by shopping here,” as green invokes imagery of not just green veggies, but nature as a whole. Of course, you can overanalyze as many logos as you want to try to squeeze meaning out of any color, but that’s kind of the whole point: color should be thought out and intentional.

This gets us to Corporate Memphis. You’ve seen it before; think of the flat, geometric people that seemingly every company is using nowadays. Beyond my personal hatred for nearly every aspect of this art style, it objectively uses color terribly. Worse than that, it’s not just that the colors don’t have poorly thought-out meaning, they don’t have any meaning at all. Corporate Memphis’ entire justification for existing is being an inclusive, culturally neutral art style that companies can slap onto their branding and advertising to lazily imply that they are a morally good entity. Given that, their use of color makes more sense, as cultures have different ingrained connotations tied to colors, but practically, it makes for a boring, soulless design, which is a problem with the art style as a whole, but I am placing the majority of the blame on its color use.

Take this example from Facebook. Okay, based on the overall bright color scheme and body language of the characters drawn, we are clearly supposed to get a sense of fun and joy. So that begs the question, why is the violin, the “vessel of fun” of the dude smack-dab in the middle the same dark (read: NOT FUN) color as the background? Why is 80% of the second-from-the-left lady’s design taken up by purple? What’s that supposed to convey? That she’s . . . rich? Some sort of nobility? A sagely wizard? What’s the point in making the skin tone of two of the people be a direct match to the color of another’s pants? I get this nauseating feeling that the goal was to make the colors represent both everything and nothing at the same time, which is an awful idea. This is an example of bad color use, in which (in my opinion) the color choices actively detract from the design as a whole. If the colors were, god forbid, thought out, maybe this design wouldn’t make me hate Facebook even more than I already do. But, here we are, and I hate Facebook, and I hate this art style.

A good example of well-thought out colors in this art style would be anything from Youtube science channel Kurzgesagt. They use a similar art style while actually managing to convey real meaning with their color choices. Take this for example:

This is the thumbnail for the video entitled “Loneliness,” which you probably could’ve gotten just from the design. See how the meaning of the overall color scheme isn’t forcibly stripped away from it? Overanalysis time: the use of blue (a color commonly associated with sadness) corresponds with red, allowing for the purple (being both red and blue in a way) in the middle to effectively communicate that it is something that is both a part of the rest while being distinctly different, which is a common feeling that lonely people have.

This is getting too long so I’ll cut it short with a short and simple conclusion: color is good when use well, but color is really bad when used poorly.

As long as humans have made art, as long as we’ve sought a way to express ourselves beyond just words, people from all around the world have used shape. Throughout her article “How Geometry Influences Logo Design”, designer Maggie Macnab outlines how form and function intersect through the use of geometry, and how we can use one of the most fundamental aspects of our reality and our art, shape, to either strengthen or weaken our designs, particularly logos.

Shapes are simple. A triangle nothing more than three lines, and you would be very hard pressed to find anyone above a few years old that couldn’t identify a triangle when we see one. We also have an intuitive understanding of how shapes interact in and with our world, our lived experience. Reading the article reminded me pareidolia. It goes further than just this example, but when you see a face in a completely inanimate object, maybe a few scratches in some rock, that’s pareidolia. Understanding geometry is hard-coded into our biology, so it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that shape is one of the most important and effective tools when it comes to making a cohesive, readable design.

Logos are no different. I think the logo progression of The Animal Planet TV channel exemplifies this perfectly.

The logos from 1996-2008 use a combination of different shapes to make up their shape language, and as a result, they end up feeling the most “balanced” or “neutral”. The rounded typeface helps round out the sharp edges of the logo “box”, and the perfectly circular earth directly contrasts with the complicated, disjointed elephant silhouette. In 2008, the logo changed pretty drastically. The entire design is extremely rectangular; the logo is containing itself into a rectangular outline. This may just be me, but this logo seems the most “crazy.” The entire logo is a rectangle, yes, but the individual rectangles within the design, seen most notably in each letter of “Animal” vary in size (and slightly in spacing), creating multiple, smaller shapes within it. Additionally, the sideways “M” creates its own box on its own axis, forcing you to look at the logo from multiple perspectives simultaneously. These two design choices break the visual flow of logo even while using one primary shape, which, at least to me, gives off the feeling of exotic and untamed, which is probably exactly what they intended. The most recent logo seems the most “friendly” and down-to-earth, which many companies nowadays are extremely worried about seeming. The entire logo, from the elephant to the font, is rounded and soft, with minimal and simplified points, which give off the feeling of softness almost to the point of meekness. It is also the logo with the least contrast between shapes, even including the one that is literally all rectangles, which makes me look at the logo all at once rather than looking at any individual part of it. It completely breaks the visual flow to be something that is instantly recognizable even with the most minimal of glances, but because it exists in a world of almost nothing but simple, minimalistic, round logos and “corporate artstyle”, it is also the least unique and offers the least character. Both prior logos, in my mind, are not only more iconic and recognizable, but also say more about what the channel has to offer.

In conclusion, shape is one of the starting points when it comes to any design, and when it comes to creating a readable and recognizable logo, it can literally make or break it, especially when you want your design to really stand out. Because shapes are so simple, we can use them to easily and effectively communicate different intentions and fish for the right emotional response. I’m curious to know which one of the Animal Planet logos are our personal favorites and why.