Death of a logo...

This is me venting:
About a month ago (maybe longer), I pitched 2 logo variations to a client. One incorporated clean, modern looking rings and a modern typeface. The other was a handrawn (sketched) icon with a very organic font. I did a good job at selling them on the rings, but they really liked the more organic font and wanted me to combine the two. My boss, put his foot down and said that to combine them would be to create a platypus - something that exists, but is kinda ugly.

So that brings us to today. I have been working for a couple of weeks now to make the modern rings more organic feeling. I used water colors to create a set of rings that looked more like the ripples of water (the point of what we were trying to convey).

Long story short, here are the comments from the client via a conference call... *Note there are 4 people on their end giving us advice/comments:

"Well, we don't really see the circles as rings of water. We just see circles."

"Actually, the overlap of circles reminds me of Mickey Mouse."

"Can we just go back to the original rings? And then can you add that more organic font with it?"

"Here, I'll show you what I mean. I am sending you an email where I, you know, used the circles from the first clean-looking logo and the font from the first organic-looking logo. Can't you just do it like?"

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Can someone please shoot me now???

Letter to the Editor regarding design...

This letter that we received for the monthly magazine that I lay out made me laugh. I just wanted to get feedback from my friends that are designers...

Portion from actual letter:
I am color blind in the orange/red part of the spectrum. As a result, I couldn’t read several pages of the August 2008 issue. Are you trying to make ID hard to read?

By the way, the highest contrast is not black on white, but black on yellow. And it would be nice if the body type was one size larger.

I think people who do magazine layouts forget that design should make the publication easy to read. It’s not to show off how creative they are.

So what do you guys think... is black on yellow the best form of contrast? Hah. I think the best part is comment that magazines are not to show off how creative you are... they are solely for the purpose of reading... I will have to remember that the next time I flip through a magazine and choose to read articles based on how well the images work together and grab my attention.

Clients - Urgh!!!!

Can I just say that is extremely frustrating when you send an invoice to a client and they call you up complaining that their bill is too high.

They think that a postcard design with 3 different comps, copy AND all corrections and file prep time should have only taken you 2 hours when it took you closer to 6.

They proceed to tell you that since you are a professional it should only take you 2 hours because you "know what you are doing" and that they could produce the same work if they sat down for 5 hours!!!

This is the time when freelancing really sucks.