The jigsaw pieces don't fit, ma!

1. London 2012

This one goes without saying as the mascot of all horrible modern logo designs. One justification given by the ad agency Wolff Olins is for the logo to connect with the younger people. ??? Younger people of the Punk Rock 80′s? Anyway, the agency is about a million dollars richer, and the rest of us designers are all poorer for it.

You can sense a 'gap' in design quality. Geddit? Gap... heheh...

2. GAP

OK, so I’m designing a logo for this world renowned global brand. I’ll just go ahead and give my brain a rest and use one of the most overused font in the history of design, Helvetica, and then we’ll put a blue square somewhere off to the side. And what I came up with is Gap’s redesigned logo.

Welcome to American Idol 50's Theme Diner, can I take your order?

3. American Idol

Millions (and possibly billions) of people watch American Idol. Apparently all of them could do a better job than that one person who designed this abomination. Gimme an oval, put some swirly generic cursive text with some neon effect and there we go! That just makes as enough sense as Randy Jackson calling “Yo Dawg” and “Listen, Dude” to the lady singers.

Seriously, $500 million couldn't get you a font that doesn't come free with Microsoft Office?

4. Avatar

I have one word.

Papyrus.

Thunder thunder thunder thunder cars!

5. Proton

Here’s one with a local flavour. Malaysia’s premier automaker, Proton could never seem to come up with anything original, from their 1983 logo of a crescent and star ripped off from the top left corner of the Malaysian flag and English football club, Portsmouth FC.

Rebranding then brought about the Thundercats clone, making me wonder what could’ve been if we could swap Penn State’s Nittany Lion logo which looks wayyy more automobile-ish than Proton’s current logo.

6. Google

The 2-colour rule of logo design doesn't apply here

For one of the biggest corporate giants in the world these days, can you say, booooooring!? And what’s with the kindergarten colours! Weee….

Granted. Google’s almost daily  deviations are creative pretty much makes up for it. You could almost tell that the bigwigs at the company knows this and came up with that idea in the first place and hope that we’d all forget how crap the logo looks in the first place. Still, that doesn’t save them from being on this list.

7. Pepsi

A taste you can believe in

Upon seeing the logo the first time, I couldn’t help picture something unflattering about it. Lawrence Yang describes it best by drawing this:

8. And finally, we’re down to…

…the final proof that design is dead. Nevermind 2012, repent and prepare for the worst, poor graphic designers, for the end has come! Why so glum, you ask? Below are some links to really awesome logo designs. Simple, clean, smart, witty, while conveying the company philosophy, style and industry in an instant. They’re quite numerous to list so I’m linking some really awesome resources for logos here, so take a look and see how many of them are as big and popular as these previous 7 companies I listed here. Take a look at them and weep on how sad the state of our world of aesthetics is and why the Tea Party Movement, Muammar Khadafy, The Kardashians, Snookie are all still relevant.

In memoriam…

35 Fantastic Simple Logo Designs @ Unstage.com

50-best-creative-logo-designs-from-2010 @ Creativefan.com

50+ Kick Ass Logos for Inspiration @ Fuelyourcreativity.com

What does a superhero, an Edward-Scissorhand hairstyled yuppie looking at a cakeworm, a fat snowman, babushka, sheep and a Chinese lady with an Easter-Island statue like head have in common?

NOTHING! Just happened to draw them all on a piece of paper one day.

One of random character ideas of an ancient creature I call, the Elephaunt. He’s one of an ancient, forgotten creature found on the same alien planet where the ‘alien’ Egyptian Pharoahs came from. And one day, he meets a new friend on Earth, a tiny mouse named Cobbs McClanahan (yeah, mice in Ancient Egypt can have that kind of name!) and they go on adventures together, thwarting the evil ancient Pharoahs and ultimately saving mankind and teaching them how to live free.

This is what I think of when I’m bored. :S