Mar 21, 2009

Is it time to retire the black and white logo?


I'm working on a couple of identities at the moment where their primary usage is online. You could call them digital identities.

Sure, they will be used offline at some point, people still have business cards, but the over riding majority of times they will be seen online. At least 95% of the time.

A couple of times whist working on these identities we've discussed a black and white version, that's a normal thing to do. And every time someone has asked, why?. Every time it's been a struggle to answer that question.

Lots of you will be horrified by that, but most of the time, I think I'm a pretty traditional designer. Function before form, ideas will always win, etc etc. And I can put together a decent case for a black and white version of a logo. But if you start to look at the evidence it becomes harder and harder to defend. We need to be clear that in the example above I'm specifically talking about digital companies that operate in the digital world. They don't have shops or vans. I don't know if you've noticed, but there's some pretty big money in this arena these days, Amazon, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo! et al. Do they need b+w versions of their logo? Read More...

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