99% Invisible - 251- Negative Space: Logo Design with Michael Bierut

Episode Date: March 15, 2017

Logos used to be a thing people didn’t really give much thought to. But over the last decade, the volume and intensity of arguments about logos have increased substantially. A lot of this is just the internet being the internet. … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Logos used to be a thing that people really didn't give much thought to. Over the last decade, the volume and intensity of arguments about logos have increased substantially. A lot of this is just the internet being, you know, the internet. But logo redesigns in particular attract a lot of hyperbolic vitriol. I was wondering what this felt like to a designer, so I talked to one of my favorites. Michael Beirot is an AIGA metalist and partner at the International Design Consultancy Pentagram, where his work includes brand identity, logos, book design, and packaging.

I had such a fun time talking with them, I just thought I'd put our conversation out as its own episode. I hope you dig it. Many of you might be familiar with the logos we discuss, but if you need a little help drawing your memory, this is a great episode to listen to as you scroll through the images on this episode's webpage at 99pi.org. Michael says that for a very long time, no one understood what his job as a graphic designer really meant, but recently, that's changed. I have to admit, now a lot of times people will say, oh, so do you do logos? Or they'll outright ask me what I think of, you know,

some logo that's in the news. And this is entirely new and kind of startling and unnerving. What is the most recent logo they've asked you about? Have you even asked about your own logo? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I was like as if they didn't know. Oh, no.

Oh, absolutely. I was back in early 2015. I was engaged in a secret project, which was to design a logo for the campaign of, as of yet undeclared candidate for President Hillary Clinton. And it launched. There was a huge amount of attention to this logo, which, you know, became ubiquitous, I think, the age with the arrow in it. And at one point, before it was widely known that I was a designer of it, I got an email from a magazine saying that they were convening a bunch of designers to volunteer to say how

they would have designed the logo, because it was so horrible. And so like, we'd like to know, how would would have designed the logo because it was so horrible. And so like, we'd like to know, how would you have designed it if you could have done anything? And I sort of, you know, I just said, oh, you know, I think I'll pass this time. So tell me a bit more how the Hillary logo came about. It used to be that people would run for political office and they didn't understand that they needed a logo and maybe they didn't need a logo. Barack Obama changed all that in 2008. He ran and he had this now famous O for Obama in blue with sort of red stripes leading

into the center of the O with the O kind of symbolizing a setting or probably more likely a rising sun And that symbol was so ubiquitous both in 208 the fact that he won kind of Seal the deal it appeared over the next eight years representing his candidacy and we'll go on to Brand I assume his foundation and his library and his post activities. With that kind of established as a benchmark for political campaigns, by the time 2016 rolled around every candidate, one way or another had one bail at logo, and very early on in 2015, the beginning of the year I got a call from a team that was consulting with Hillary Clinton. They asked me whether I would volunteer my services to create a logo for Secretary Clinton.

And what we wanted to do was exploit some of the characteristics that people had come to appreciate. I think possibly by accident about the Obama logo, one of which was that it could be adapted into different forms. You could kind of like customize it for different groups of voters or different locations.

And so we had this idea like what if we had a symbol that you could change every day if you wanted, you could make it celebrate LGBT rights one day and celebrate veterans the next day and then modify it for Memorial Day the day after that or Halloween the day after that. That required something very simple. So we came up with this very simple age with an arrow going through it, kind of symbolizing we thought that the candidate

was moving the country forward and also giving us a way to kind of point that age at other things, meaning that Hillary was for, or veterans or for LGBT rights, or for me. And it's just kind of like proved to be a really interesting malleable, lively system in the end. You know, it's interesting because it's this sort of device, you know, for one thing, no one really votes, people don't vote for logos.

They vote for candidates and they vote for people who they think will improve their lives in some actual way, not people that have flashy logos. But often it's some tangible symbol will crystallize in the voting public's mind, the essence of what a candidate is. And I think just as Hillary perhaps had that age with an arrow in it, and by the time it was election day, I was seeing it everywhere and certainly, you know, at the convention center, the Javits convention center that night for what was meant to be the victory party. People had an embroidered on their jackets, temporary tattoos on their faces. It was everywhere.

It was interesting. At the same time, her opponent had a red hat with the slogan on the front of it. And that in a way was a logo for that candidacy. So I think there's the substance of what people are promising and there's sort of the tangible bit of shorthand that kind of sums up what that promise is. And I think that in the commercial world, that's what symbols have always done, you know, you're meant to kind of ascribe all sorts of higher transcendent values to things like basketball sneakers and soda and SOTOPOPs, you know, and instead the transcendent values are then athletic achievement and

refreshment respectively and somehow devices like swishes or Dynamic ribbons or whatever you want to say are kind of meant to be the holders of that meaning that is then kind of reinforced by advertising and by hopefully actual firsthand experience with the product. It's interesting. I never really thought of the hat being a logo. Could you sort of pull apart some of its qualities as to what it's conveyed to you and why

it works. I think what was interesting about Donald Trump's red make America great hat was that one, it's very, it's a very populist sort of thing. It's clearly not something one associates with coastly leads, you know, who are intellectuals. Although I know, I, hey, I have baseball caps and wear baseball caps. So, you know, and, and so maybe I'm not an elite, I'm from Ohio after all, but it's definitely not suited for a black tie or a business attire. It's meant to be the kind of thing you associate maybe with hardworking, saltedly or with

Americans. The fact that it's red is making of making a really clear statement about red America, let's say, and the slogan make America great again, all caps, you know, cap locked, yelling aptly, I think, kind of reminded people of the candidate's own delivery of those words. And I think most importantly, it wasn't an underground thing. It was very visible. If you sort of wore a supporter, you put that thing right on your head. And it was like, if someone was looking at your face,

they would look at that hat and they'd read those words. Wearable brands like that, sort of tattoos, are sort of the big commitment you make to kind of advertising someone else's cause. And so I assume that he had buttons and stickers and signs and stuff like that, but that hat, which is meant to be worn, was like really calling on people to personally identify what they candidate in a really unequipical way. So the Hillary age with an arrow logo is released,

and people react to it the way they react to any logo right now, which is a really active discussion online, whenever a new one is done. Yeah. And it's also in the context of this political campaign where she got an unbelievable amount of criticism, no matter what she did. Yeah. But I remember people reacting to the H with the arrow,

really strongly, some of it quite negative. Were you prepared for that in any way? What had taken me back and what I should have seen coming is that logo, which I actually personally thought was, and still think, was really good. I mean, it was exactly the one that we wanted the campaign to use. We were confident that over the course of the campaign, it would be used in all sorts of ways that would win people over. And I think that was largely proven out.

I mean, I think by the time November came around, if you sort of like went on the Pant suit nation Facebook page, you would see a million different expressions of it, all homegrown and grassroots and really, really fun. And I remember saying while we were working, while we were looking at all the different options of the logo, I remember saying, I want something that's so simple that a first grader could do it with construction paper, Elmer's glue and kindergarten scissors. You know, I didn't want a fancy thing. You needed to know

software programs to create. I wanted something that was as easy to draw as a heart or a peace sign or a smiley face. You know, something that could be that ubiquitous. And I think we got pretty close to it. It's just a very simple piece of geometry and two primary colors. Now, really though, what happens when somebody like that is launched put out there into, you know, the uncairing world, people treated as a, it's open-endedness, actually, at that moment, works against it. It's open-ended, and it's actually, at that moment, works against it. It's treated as a Rorschach bloat, and everyone projects things onto it, right? And this happens with sports teams. It happens with colleges and universities.

But I think I underestimated to the degree to which it would happen with the political candidate, where someone is well-known as Secretary Clinton. You know, there's a lot of people who have opinions about it already. And then suddenly they have this convenient thing upon which to project opinions they may have already had, or opinions that they just thought were clever, or whatever it was. And so suddenly, you know, I kind of would marvel.

Sometimes I'd say it's just some straight lines, some 90 degree angles, some 45 degree angles, and two primary colors. It doesn't mean, you know, it's, you know, people would say, well, what does it mean? I said, well, it's an H because it's, that's the candidate's name because of H. It's an arrow because she wants to move the country forward and it's red, white, and blue because of America. And that's really the truth. That's what it meant. And yet, you know, I was, I was kind of taking it back, but I shouldn't have been actually.

And I have to commend the campaign who were resolute about their commitment to it. And in fact, really brought it to life and made it really sing over the subsequent months. In contrast, there was a notorious logo that was unveiled when Donald Trump identified his running mate in the form of Governor Pence, and they had this T.P. ligature that a lot of people thought they saw, you know, unsavory things in, and made fun of it, and animated it in ways that are kind of salacious. And it was like, it just was made to disappear, and kind of blink it. You know, if you unveil a logo and you really are committed to it,

the worst thing you can do is sort of blink and sort of say, oops, forget that, we're making that go away and forget you ever saw that. I think if you stick to it and just act like you really mean it, eventually the world will get used to it. And then eventually, if you wait long and people will be outraged if you try to redesign it into something else.

If you wait long, people will be outraged if you try to redesign it into something else. Do you remember the first time there was a public fight about a logo where normal people like got involved? So for years, kind of like logo redesigns was like a very esoteric thing where people like me who had gone to art school to learn to be graphic designers, would sort of say, did you see they changed the UPS logo? The logo for UPS delivery trucks. And I know who designed the original logo, I know who did the redesign, I know what kind of things to say about it, and everyone would talk about it. So there were little chat rooms on websites where people would comment for days on the pros and cons of things like that. The first time I remember going public was the gap floated a redesign of its logo.

It appeared online and suddenly someone said, oh my God, the gap, the retail store, the gap is going to redesign its logo. And to the surprise of the gap, all these consumers started getting really agitated about and started saying, save the old gap logo, or this new logo is ridiculous. It looks, usually the criticism that's lodged against new logos is that my four year old could have designed that new logo.

Now, I actually think that's a good thing. I like logos that four year old can design, actually. But to most people, they seem like logos are sophisticated things that need to be designed with complicated equipment by skillful people and they also assume that a lot of money was spent on logos too. So how much was someone paid to do this thing? You know, so I remember that the gap had sort of let this logo float around out there that was not the Blue box with the highly condensed Sarah Plettters GAP that we're all familiar with,

but it was a lowercase helvetica with this superimposed faded blue square kind of put off center on the letters. And for some reason, it just really aggravated people. Even I was surprised by that, and people asked me my opinion of it, and I remember a normal person asking my opinion about a logo before, but that became that there was something started happening more and more in the years to follow. So something about social media, something about the internet kind of is enabled all this to happen. And they definitely blinked on that one. Oh yeah. They sort of, you know, I think they denied they have remented, you know, oh, that was just something we were experimenting with.

Don't worry. We've heard our loyal customers loud and clear and never fear we shampoo changing the gap logo And it was interesting is of course, you know, that's a logo doing exactly what it's supposed to do I mean when people are being sold logos They're told that they will be the receptacle of all the passion that the consumers have for a brand which is this kind of weird Hard to express thing, otherwise, but now all of a sudden, this will be the focal object upon which all that love is going to be aimed.

And naturally then, the customers think that they own the logo. And then when the company has the temerity to change it without asking anyone's permission, suddenly the customers who have been told, this is love this thing, all of a sudden, has changed on them and without warning, and they get, like, freaked out.

Do you think that general design awareness in the public has made your job easier or harder? Oh, I think it's made it easier, and it's made it more fun, I would say. I've always thought that what I do, what I do is in the most important thing in the world, but I always thought it was important. I've devoted my life to it,

and it's gratifying to have people notice it. And I don't think we can ask people to notice our work and think it's worth talking about, and then presume to tell people, but you can only say positive things about it. You know what I think? I mean, if people are gonna talk about it, you'll get uninformed people talking about it,

you had informed people talking about it And by large people like I think negative comments are always more fun to read than positive ones a rave review It's a little dull to read But I mean I've never had anyone forward me a positive restaurant review You know like on the other hand if the restaurant view of the New York Times takes a restaurant apart You know the relish with which that writer will describe every dish is just a sight to behold. And I think, you know, so I think, you know, its criticism is much more fun to write and more fun to read. And unless we want to go back to having

no one notice what we're doing and pretending like it doesn't matter at all, we should just get used to criticism. And I have, that's for sure. I mean, is there a way to get used to criticism? Like, it'd be figured out, what's your sort of Jiu-Jitsu method of dealing with it? One of my partners and I, Michael Gerricky, and I redesigned the logo for the Big Ten football conference. And it needed to be redesigned because it was called

the Big Ten, but it had 11 teams in it. And they had this clever logo that combined the words Big Ten written out with the number 11 kind of hiding by the T for 10. So it was sort of like, you would simultaneously read 10 and 11 while looking at it, which I just thought was a neat solution to a problem which actually shouldn't be focused on. I mean, let's not celebrate this weird disconnect between the name of the conference and the number of actual teams that are in it, and they were going to 12 teams and not even more teams. So the whole thing was they decided to kind of

just come up with a logo that wasn't based on the actual number of teams in the conference, which was just called the Big Ten Conference. So we did basically a logo that was made out of the letter is BIG for big, and then we did a treatment of the eye and big and the G and big so it had a double reading as the number 10. And so when that was unveiled, I actually got voicemail about it from people saying, I can't believe you. What's wrong with you people? Those people are the loyal fans.

And I remember someone at the Big Ten conference when this logo launched telling me, this is the passion that makes them sit in those seats when the weather is terrible. The same passion is going to make them take it personally when you fit it with the logo. What happens is once people get over the shock, if you can hold on tight, they'll get used to the new logo and if it's any good at all, it'll soon be the beloved Big 10 logo and people will sort of like then object the next time it's changed.

As long as people still care about the Big 10, they'll care about it every time it's changed. And I have to admit, we're entering a stage now where I have worked with clients on doing logos and doing updates to logos where I can tell the worst thing that could happen is if no one reacted at all. The best thing would be if everyone loved it, but the worst thing would be if no one noticed. They're happy to take the outrage just because, wow, people really care about us. It's easy for people to care about a sports team or a university, it's a little bit harder

to make people care about a retail brand, but people do feel very faithful to retail stores because they put those garments right in their bodies. And I think it's actually a little bit harder to make people care about financial institutions and more abstract entities that play a more kind of distant role in our lives. But all of them now will get comments on logo updates and I think that you just who that

you use to sort of weather it is, you just sort of think, well, people are going to react to change strongly sometimes, but the strength that reaction is actually directly related to the depth of feeling they have about the particular brand that you're representing. So it's a little bit bad news, equally good news, I think. Have you ever had a one-on-one interaction with a person, like a Buckeye fan, just deeply enraged and how did it go? Well, this is what's interesting with those Buckeye fans, for instance. I had this policy of responding.

They found out somehow it came out that we had done it and people found our emails and I started getting forward these emails that had a lot of how dare you or how much you charge you, you should be ashamed yourself for my father who was class of 23 is spinning in his grave or whatever. And I would always write back in this really kind of courteous way saying, one, it's always disappointing to work hard on something to know that people don't like it. I can only hope that you, over time, come to at least get used to it, ideally come to like it as much as we do or at the very least not have a bother you quite as much. But I know that the team values the strong feelings you have

about them and as a fellow fan, that's the thing that we all really focus on. I would write something like that and I really meant it too. I really meant every element to that. And then about two thirds of the people I would write to would write me back in this chasin sort of tone where they say, oh, oh, thanks. I'm sorry. I was going over the top a little bit. I still don't like it, but I was happy to hear explanation and I'm sorry, I kind of like

fire that off to you in the heat of the moment. Somebody wouldn't apologize, but clearly the one thing that was really obvious was that the thing that really bothered them the most was their sense that giant, impersonal corporate forces were arbitrarily changing things that they cared about personally with no thought of who they were as fans and what the team was or anything like that. And the idea that there was a human being with a name

and a voice who might share their feelings in any way whatsoever, you could tell it wasn't what they were picturing. It's a very satisfying target if you just think somewhere up there, horrible people are messing with something that I liked and now it's ruined and I hate you. And then if all of a sudden that person shows up in person, it's a little bit kind of, oh, I didn't quite mean that. So again, my goal, I'm not trying to convert these people.

I mean, I sincerely feel bad. When I design something, I actually am not trying to make people mad. I want people to like the thing I design. And I'm sort of almost always convinced at the moment that eventually, if the thing I've designed is well crafted and is really appropriate for its purpose, fits the team, team fits the audience eventually will come to when I play the same role in their lives that the thing did that it replaced. And logos are interesting because I design a lot of things, I design say book covers, let's say. And a book cover it has one moment of truth when you're buying a book in a bookstore, you walk down the aisle and it catches your eye and then you think, oh, this looks interesting, you pick it up and you decide to buy it.

Then your experience thereafter is basically with the book itself and the role that the cover played isn't that consequential. Logos though, they're one of the few things that appreciate and value as they're used. If you picture, you know, really simple logos that are iconic in the American commercial landscape now like the target logos, they are the Nike swish. These are things that a 40-year-old could design are really simple looking, have no inherent meaning. Well, the target logo has a meeting that people find exasperating. If you're hiring some fancy design for them to do a logo for a company called Target,

and they come back and they say, we came up with something really great. Here it is. It's a target. It's like, how long did that take? But I mean, think about how much they've been able to do with the simplicity of that mark. Think about how they've been able to manipulate very simple forms to mean all sorts of different things. And I would argue that that logo now, regardless of they've been able to manipulate very simple forms to mean all sorts of different things.

And I would argue that that logo now, regardless of they paid for it back in the 60s when it was commissioned, it's worth, you know, a hundred times as much now. What is your least favorite aspect of the heated discussion around logos or redesigns when they happen publicly? Like, what is the type of criticism where you just like, oh, that's not. I don't know. Oh, well, you know, if you design something new, people for some reason are so desperate to reconcile it

with something they're already familiar with that they'll say, oh, that looks exactly like this other thing. And sometimes, depending on their frame of mind, they'll say that looks exactly like this other thing that could be something vaguely muddy, like, you know, male or female anatomy or something like that. There's like so much of that goes around.

And no matter what you design, you know, they have this very human need to kind of turn abstract shapes into something figurative that means something. And really, I mean, what logos are meant to be our empty vessels into which meaning is poured and that meaning when they work right is the meaning that your firsthand experience with the thing that's represented by the logo is. And I think when someone just says,

oh, that looks like, that looks like Genitalia to me. Did you see it? That's sort of is tough. Also, I've never actually committed this error all the way, but if you're a practicing graphic designer, or if you're a young graphic designer out there, I'll, one bit of advice I have is if you're practicing graphic designer, if you're a young graphic designer out there, I'll, one bit of advice I have is if you're like working on a logo that is like a, say, it's a quasi,

you know, it's a geometric logo with a, with a four part kind of thing that kind of has a rotational angular rotational aspect. If someone says that kind of reminds me of a swastika, you will, that, just, you know, that's a signal you should, that that logo will not be presented to anyone, just put it away, actually. That sort of is like, that's close to, I mean, you can say it looks like a penis, and like, you can actually get over that, but I mean, logos that look like swastika is just like, really, I remember I was going to a meeting with a, you know, to a client and I had privately

had a little twinge with, I did a low I really liked and it sort of had these kind of geometric characteristics that depending on how you looked at it, you know, you know, I've been known, not really. And then so I was going there and I did this big presentation. I needed like, and I needed someone to help me just carry the thing to the meeting. And not even being in the mean, just carrying me in there. It was like an intern and the intern said, this one sort of looked like a swastika to you. And I remember like almost like bursting into tears and saying, now you've ruined everything. And sure enough, I go in the meeting.

I said, this one, you know, the client says, well, this one, you know, you see what it looks like. Right? And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, what was I thinking? So I guess I hate that the most. If someone says it looks like an emblem of the most evil, political and cultural force of the 20th century, that's not good. And it just goes to show you, though, that was, you know, the swastika was this perfectly abstract harmless and even kind of benevolent symbol for centuries.

It was a spiritual insignia that kind of has a lot of application in Eastern culture and then got hijacked by one guy, a failed artist and his friends and they turned it into what they turned it into and it just goes to show you. I mean, somebody notices it. That's a good piece of criticism because obviously, you do want to, I mean, when you're doing these things, you do want to say, you know, what does this look like? What does this remind you of?

And these days, particularly, abstract logo designers have the same problem that people coming up with names for products to, or you know, where it's, you know, we're all the good names we're taking. And all the good URLs we're taking and frequently all the good, kind of simple abstract geometric logos are taken. So it's really hard to find one that hasn't been done already.

When you do these things, you have to do these, you know, you do these legal searches. You try to make sure that no one else has used it. If you can find one that's nice and simple that is available, you're just kind of like, oh my, you feel like you've discovered a new content. Oh my God. Yeah. Want to play a guy and declare yourself king. Have you ever seen a new logo or a redesigned logo and over time had the most change of heart

about it like a real strong reaction and then kind of began to love it. Do you remember anything like that where your point of view changed, either for the more positive or for the more negative? Partly because of the way I've been trained and having done this for so many years, my snap judgment about logos is probably more refined than it should be. So there are ones that I saw when they were brand new that I didn't like much then and I still don't like. But a lot of times even if I don't like it, I sort of get what they were going for. There's some that are just outright. I just plain don't like them. Here in New York, we had the longstanding logo of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was

replaced with a logo that replaced a drawing of an M with the letters, with letters saying the Met. And a lot of people didn't like it partly because it was new and replacing something that they were used to. And partly because I would concede it was like really idiosyncratic and weird looking. But at the same time I was thinking, you know, but if you go to the Met, you know, it's a big complicated idiosyncratic place. You go there and get lost. It's like really labyrinthin inside. It has so much stuff there to try to represent this thing

with something that could look like it was for a pharmaceutical company, something clean and simple, wouldn't be doing it justice. It needs something that kind of feels complicated and idiosyncratic and specific. So I remember, I looked at it, and even now when I see it, it still kind of takes me back sometimes because I was used to the old one like everyone else was.

But I can recognize that in the long run, I think it will, if they stick with it, I think it'll work and come to be as beloved as its predecessor was. When you say that you plain don't like something, just like in general, what are those things that you plain don't like? Is there a way you could articulate those qualities? I mean, I hate to say it, but just like everyone else, I'll look at something and say, oh my goodness, that's rather ugly, isn't it?

You know, and like, you know, I mean, for instance, if you want to talk about another design, the design for the 2012 Olympics in London were widely criticized. And I think right, to the degree that it's right to criticize logos, I can really see why people criticize, because I think that was like a darn funny looking logo, because it was like really chunky and jaggedy and kind of cookie looking. But again, I have to admit, I sort of got it. It's like, you know, like a presidential campaign logo, it's sort of only, it had to mark a moment in time.

It wasn't designed to be this enduring thing that would last forever. It just had to kind of like symbolize what was happening in that specific place at a specific time and would be further associated with all these kind of feats of athleticism that would be the actual real experience of the event, not just the logo. And so in a way, something idiosyncratic and specific could come to stand for all those other things.

However, I still think it's ugly. It's just like ugly. It's sort of ungainly. It's like. It's just like ugly. It's sort of ungainly. It's like weird looking. I could never quite, I have to admit, I personally and privately need to make up a story that explains it. Hence I could make up a lot of stories for the Met logo.

I could make up a lot of stories for every logo I've ever designed. To me, it's sort of the same pleasure I used to take as a kid, you know, sitting in my dentist's office looking at highlights magazine. They have that thing called Hidden Pictures pictures where it's just drawing us. It's the best, right? It's just drawing and then it says in the picture above, can you find, you know, a teapot, a hairbrush, you know, a basketball, and then you can't see any of those things. Then you see, oh my god, like the hairbrush is the drapes on that window and the basketball is that plate that's in the pantry, you know, and then obviously you're finding all these things.

And there's such pleasure in discovering those things. And if you've got a logo that has that bit of pleasure embedded in it. And I think with, like for instance, when we embedded the 10 in the eye and the gene that big 10 logo, we were trying to do something like that. The most famous instance of it probably with contemporary logos is the arrow that's hidden in the FedEx logo. But I think those little surprises just give people so much, they give them a little bit of joy, make them feel smart, and actually make them complete the picture in their own

mind. And you have the pleasure of looking at something and making a discovery. And I think if you associate that moment of pleasure with a logo, that really is a great thing. Even if you look at a logo and say, well, all those ligatures are meant to symbolize connection. That's not quite as fun as finding a hairbrush in some window curtains, but it's something. And it works for me these many years later. So last year there was a redesign of the Kodak logo and I interviewed Kira Alexandra of work order who did it and when I talked to her she purposely talked about how they just rolled it out kind of low key and they didn't make a big hell of a blue about it.

I mean it still got criticized in different ways and largely lauded. But, you know, it was kind of a reaction to the brand new thumbs up, thumbs down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, what do you think of that? Is that a good idea? Do you also, do you feel smirly inclined or do you like to throw it out there and have it be a bit of a bloodsport? You know,, what is your take on that? Well, I used to tell my clients, no one will care when your logo goes out there. Don't take out an ad in the paper and say,

bold new look, same great taste, you know, like no one cares. You know, I, I used to like joking and say, oh, honey, honey, kids come in. You know, a malgum-ated widget just changed their logo. You know, no one cares. But then we passed through this weird thing where it became this funny kind of like social media enabled blood sport where like, you know, a malgommated widget just changed its logo

in 321, game on, you know, and it's like, you know, my four year old could do that, how much they pay for this piece of crap, et cetera, you know. So suddenly it turned to this like thing that people did for their own and others' amusement. I still think, though, that these things succeed to the degree that they're actually reflecting something of substance that's really changed in the thing that's represented by the logo. So in the case of Kodak, when they updated that logo, it was meant to mark the rebirth of a beloved American company that to certain generations of photographers really was the gold standard of or just the ubiquitous kind of element in the photographic process. And it was associated with that five-letter

word codec, especially with the yellow box and with that very simple logo that they had. And when you know, Kira Alexander and her team updated it, they actually were really careful, I thought, insensitive to extrapolating everything they were doing from examples in the past. And I know what pleasure she took. She did one big bold move, which was, instead of writing Kodak, horizontally, she writes it vertically. She stacks the five letters one to top each other, and is able to make a very neat kind of ready for the 21st century and all the requirements that logos have to have today

in terms of reproduction and dissemination. She made a really nice logo with that move and took a great deal of pleasure in finding a couple of examples of the letters being stacked in the same way from deep in the past of the company. So she was able to kind of give the whole thing, this imprimatur, this endorsement from almost beyond the grave from the deep in the history of the company, which I think was really satisfying and actually very effective for them. from the deep in the history of the company, which I think was really satisfying, and actually very effective for them. Is there like a fashion right now that you wrestle against or maybe one that you think

is right? I mean, like simple, for example, is like, I don't think that's, I think it's kind of always been somewhat of a goal in logos, but it seems to take on a real guiding principle right now, maybe more than in the time when somebody wrote a Coca-Cola out as a long script. Is there something today that you really love that you think is a fundamental principle or do you think of it as a fashion or anything like that? I have to admit, I like simplicity of form, but I kind of, sometimes I'm a little suspicious

of simplicity and typography, you know, so I love this typeface called Helvetica, which some people would argue is among, you know, it's a very simple clean and ubiquitous typeface that you know that has represented over the years everything from American apparel to American airlines, you know, chances are no matter where you are, there's some Helbedica on something that you can see from where you're sitting. And if not just take out your wallet, and if you have any American paper currency,

that big number five on your $5 bill is in hellbedica. So there it is, right? And I think there was a time back in the late 60s where you could take any logo reset in hellbedica and it would look modern, contemporary, and kind of like ready for you know the millennium. And I think I then I fell out of favor and I think I'll be it's come back a little bit so among other things, you know very recently Diane Bonferson The adus and credit, DVF monogram that they have before. Now it's the words Diane von Furstenberg in heo-vettica.

It looks clean, it looks neutral, it looks smart, but it also at its worst, not necessarily in this case, but I mean, it has that same sort of glum and impassive and kind of, I'm too cool even to acknowledge you exist, kind of face that supermodels will have in certain fashion shoots where they just are expressionless and kind of almost zombie-like, you know? I am so cool, don't look at me, no, please look at me, not like that, I don't know who you are, go away, you know?

And so, the hell better can kind of have that quality. And I just think it can be a mean withholding typeface. So I have a bunch of listeners, they're design aware, they're design engaged. And as a person who puts things out in the world and makes logos and makes new logo systems for people, what would you want them to know when they interact with you? What type of criticism would you like to hear or not like to hear?

I sort of deal in a field where like almost like a lot of the things that define what I do kind of comes down to really boring sort of sayings like don't judge a book by its cover or on the other hand you only get one chance to make a first impression and so they all kind of contradict each other you know and you know the advice I give is that at the end of the day graphic design is really important but it's also kind of one of the most cosmetic things in the world.

If you can read an exit sign, you're going to get out the door. If the door doesn't have a door knob on it, if it's nailed closed, these are all things that are real impediments. But that exit sign can be in any typeface you want and you're still going to find the door. And so I think it's, you can make a handsome exit sign that actually fits the architecture around it. You can make one that's hard to read, and that one is gonna be dysfunctional,

but there's a lot of different ways to do it, and usually it's not a life or death thing. I think there's a lot of things that are like really life and death matters in the world, and really important and worth getting agitated about. I think that probably logo design shouldn't be one of them. There's people that are paid a lot of money to care desperately about the way logos look,

and I aspire to be one of those people. I think that if you're not getting paid to do it, like try not to do it too much, only do it to the degree it entertains you, but then move on to more important things. Michael Beirut is a partner at Pentegrin. I'm the proud owner of a signed copy of his book, How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and Everyone's

In A While, Change the World. Plus, he's the co-host along with Jessica Helfend of the podcast, The Design of Business, The Business of Design. It's really good. If you're looking for insights into the world of design and designers, you need to subscribe to it and its sister podcast, Debbie Millman's Design Matters, which is like the OG of design podcasts. They're essential listening. So I have to do the credits and some very important announcements first, but we have a special bonus interview at the end of the episode, which is a clip of a live event I did with my friend, Kevin Smokler, about the places,

both real and imagined, from your favorite 80s movies. Kevin's new book is called Brat Pack America. It's super fun, especially for anyone who grew up on those movies where places like Shurmer, Illinois, Hill Valley, The Goondocks, Sherwood, Ohio, were characters in and of themselves. So stay tuned for that. 99% invisible is Emmett Fitzgerald, Delaney Hall, Kurt Colesde, Taren Mazza, Katie Mangle,

Sean Riel, Avery Hoffman, Sheree Fusef, and me Roman Mars. Astute listeners from over the years might notice a name missing from that list. Sam Greenspan. Sam starred out on the show as a remote intern based in Baltimore when it was just me and my apartment in Richmond, California. He was the very first person I hired for the show. Actually, you guys hired him during the first Kickstarter in 2012, and he's been a critical part of our team over the years. He is moving on to do his very own project which we're all really excited about. It's too soon to tell you anything about it yet, but I want you to remember this word.

Bellweather. You can be one of the first to know what he's up to by following him on Twitter at Sam listens and signing up for his tiny letter email newsletter at Samgreenspan.org. Good luck Sam. We at NaNiPiHQ and the listening audience will miss hearing you on our show. We are a project of 91.7K ALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. So a few weeks ago, I had a conversation in front of a live audience at Spur in Oakland

with my pal Kevin Smokler about his book, Brat Pack America, which is this like 300 pages love letter to all the places where your favorite 80s teen movies were set. I really enjoyed the book and our conversation, but after I recorded it, I learned that if you aren't as well-versed in the 80s movie genre as I am, you might get a little lost and the conversation just worked way better on the website.

We could bet all the pictures of the places that we're talking about in the trailers from the conversation just worked way better on the website. We could have bet all the pictures of the places that we're talking about and the trailers from the movie along with the audio of the event. It's one of the coolest web features we've ever done, so I hope you check it out. Here's a little clip of our conversation. The locations in Ferris Bueller are all within the downtown loop and Riggly field.

And, I mean, that's one of the things that struck me. I watched Ferris Bueller again a couple of nights ago, and they kind of have a lame sense of Chicago. Oh, they sure do. It's really like, it's really touristy. Like, they're not there because they really know Chicago. They're there doing the exact same things that a literal field trip from school would take them to.

Yeah, I mean, for kids who live like three train stops away from Chicago, they act like they're there from Cody Wyoming or something. Like, you know, I mean, all they need to do is like get a slice of deep dish pizza. Like, they've completed their sort of day of touristing around Chicago. And to be fair, and this is only very slightly so

John Hughes was a white socks not a cubs fan and so he wanted to shoot the Riggly field scene at Kamiski Park which would have at least taken them to the south side of Chicago But the the socks were not in town that that weekend and so they had to film it that film it much to his Chagrin at at Riggly field so yeah yeah, it's a really like not adventurous day off. And the funny thing is John Hughes himself, even though he was very aware of himself as a deweller in the North suburbs of Chicago, went all the heck all over the place. Like I spent a lot of time with one of his kids,

and John Hughes wrote everything down. And he used to write down like all the concerts he would go to, and the art exhibits he would go to as a teenager. The guy, the guy mapped all of Chicago on foot. And somehow we get this very myopic, parochial picture of Chicago in Ferris. Here are the full interview trailers, picks, and links to Kevin's book, Rat Pack America,

on our website, 99pi.org. America on our website 99pi.org. You can find this show and like the show on Facebook. All of us are on Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify, but to find out more about this story, including cool pictures and links and listen to all the episodes of 99% Invisible, you must go to 99pii.org Radio tapio. From PRX.