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

1. I Am The One – Inon Zur (from Dragon Age: Origins)

2. Atolago (End Credits) – James Newton Howard (from The Interpreter)

3. Deep Blue – George Fenton (from Deep Blue)

4. Elysium/Honor Him/Now We Are Free – Hans Zimmer (from Gladiator)

5. Gods & Generals – John Frizzell & Randy Edelman (from Gods & Generals)

6. Freedom of the Wa – Klaus Badelt (from The Promise)

7. Resurrection – John Debney (from The Passion of Christ)

8. Give Me A Smile – John Barry (from The Beyondness of Things)

9. Climbing Up Iknimaya – The Path – James Horner (from Avatar)

10. Forth Eorlingas – Howard Shore (from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)

… overtaking Star Trek.

Inspired. Got heads up on this from Kevin Smith’s twitter feed and I agree, this may be the best trailer I’ve seen. I vaguely remembered Maurice Sendak’s cartoon, but not much, n’ didn’t think it really had a story. I love the song (Wake Me, by the Arcade Fire), and apparently the version in this movie is a newer version (and much improved) than the original which I took a listen to and thought was generic indie rock and rather forgettable. But man, everything about this trailer brings out the dreamer kid in me. I hope this doesn’t raise my hopes too much for the movie like a trailer did for M Night’s The Lady in the Water (the version with Josh Groban’s Mi Mancherai).

So now my list of must-see movies this year (post Watchmen) goes like:

1. Where The Wild Things Are

2. Star Trek (Man, I have goosebumps thinking about how good it can be. Props to Hans Zimmer whose inspiring Batman score really is the perfect scifi trailer music)

3. Avatar (The one by James Cameron scheduled for December release, trailer not out yet. So far, no word on how’s this gonna be like, but knowing Cameron, this is most likely gonna be mindblowing. It would’ve been top if it had a trailer by now)

4. Terminator Salvation (what’s with rock songs in trailers lately? not to complain tho coz it works! Oh, by the way, song is The Day the Earth Went Away by Nine Inch Nails)

5. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (I’m kinda ‘ngeeeeeeh’ with the movie and the trailer, seems like generic scifi fare n’ not a fan of Michael Bay who’s the king of Hollywoody. I repeat. Hollywoody. Not Hollywood. Still, can’t wait to watch it.)