Design fails and how to avoid them

Let’s talk design fails. 

We’ve all seen those articles featuring unfortunately designed logos. 

It wasn’t until recently that I encountered an unfortunate logo redesign IRL. From a brand I respect and admire, no less! (Which is why I have decided not to call them out on here.)

I keep seeing this logo in my LinkedIn feed daily and I can’t believe it actually got approved. 

I’m sure it was well intentioned. 

I’m sure it’s meant to signify something inspirational about being at the intersection of technology, creativity and strategy. 

I’m sure many very brilliant creative and strategic minds reviewed it, discussed it, rationalized it, and ultimately approved it (this is a big company!)

But it’s clear that this team was missing that one person with a dirty mind. That one person that has a kid in middle school. That one person who has watched Community.

…that one person with the guts to stand up in a meeting and say “um, guys… that looks like an anus.” 

Being that person is actually not fun. 

I remember the time I talked a VERY large French corporation out of dropping the first and last letters from the word Hublot to make the spelling of their new product more trendy. 

I was that Debbie Downer that poopooed a brand everyone was really excited about, and very vocally said “guy, we CANNOT go to market with a brand called U Blo.” 

I was not popular that day. 

But ultimately, the company changed the branding. So I stand by my decision. 

Since then, every time I work on a new brand or a new campaign, I gather as many different people and ask them to rip apart the idea and find all the angles the team may have missed because we were too close to the final product. Once we are done with that very painful process, we decide if the risk of “misunderstandings” is too great or if it’s one we, as a brand, are comfortable taking. 

The key takeaway here: You need different points of view when making a big decision. You need the person with their mind in the gutter, you need the anglo in a roomful of francophones, you need the person that sees a half-empty glass, and you need to empower them to speak up! 

Maybe this brand was aware of what the icon looked like. Maybe they made the conscious call to move forward with it as is. (Man, I really hope that isn’t the case and they are just blissfully unaware of how hilariously inappropriate their logo now is).

I’ll probably never know, so I’ll just continue chuckling like a 6^th grader every time I see their logo in my feed.

Marketers, creatives? I’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments. Would you have approved this logo?