The Decline of Logo Design

There seems to be a disconnect between the corporate bosses and the people in the creative world. I know these two words have always had a love-hate relationship, but for a very brief moment in time, they seemed to flourish together. There were a couple of decades where companies trusted the ad agencies to handle their branding. Just a few years ago, these companies would have hired one of the major advertising agencies in town to design their branding and the CEO would have understood the importance of hiring the best in the business. Not anymore. Today, most people think that they can either do it themselves because they have a “computer”, or they have a nephew that is really good with “computers” or worse, go to the $99 logo online companies.

A lot of corporate bosses of today have no understanding of the importance of good design, good marketing and good photography. Or worse, can’t tell the difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly. Everywhere you look, everything has a homogenized look because everyone is using the same stock photos, the same font styles for everything and the same Web templates, brochures all look the same, Websites are all the same, and as you can see, logos have become boring and predictable. Companies are having things printed at online resources with absolutely no semblance of control of their branding. All they care about is paying as little as possible without regard for their marketing materials. And their branding is not consistent through them. The company colors are not matched and appear different in each individual piece.

A few years ago, I went for a job interview to a company that had just finished building a $1 million building in Orlando. And, they wanted to pay nothing for this job. The person that conducted the interview gave me his card. A card you could just get from a sample book at a printing shop. It makes no sense. The building might be cool, but how are people going to get to it if your branding is so bad?