The most overused logos, at the moment

http://www.gtgraphics.org/genericlogos.html

by TheBiv • 12 years ago

165 60 12 years ago

gtgraphics.org

gkoberger3• 12 years ago

Site is down for me, however this works:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140625100152/http://www.gtgrap...

nichochar• 12 years ago

wow, this may seem stupid but I found this comment awesome. I was about to poste "down" or "down for me" when I saw yours and you simply bring a solution. Kind of inspired by the attitude man

thinkmoore• 12 years ago

Maybe companies should pay for good design instead of paying as little as possible for people to enter "competitions"? Good design takes time. Good designers should be compensated.

fjolthor• 12 years ago

Good design isn't as essential as other facets of a company starting out.

notduncansmith• 12 years ago

I'd be careful about conflating "a good logo" with "good design". Design will make or break plenty of companies. Logos don't really matter; as long as it a) fits the brand, b) doesn't offend anyone, and c) won't get you sued, your logo is doing its job. Way too much importance is placed on logos, in my opinion.

krallja2• 12 years ago

Trees where the trunks are people or hands

Oh hey, Khan Academy!

_RPM• 12 years ago

Blocked by mod_slotlimit. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

krzrak2• 12 years ago

great :) I wonder, how did they find all those logos?

buckbova• 12 years ago

Possibly a google search for visually similar images.

swamp40• 12 years ago

They probably made them all, for $5 each.

Alupis• 12 years ago

I can honestly say, picking a new logo for a new business is hard work!

You want something recognizable and unique, represents your brand and message... at all pixel sizes, in greyscale and color, etc. How will this look printed on letterhead? How about in an email signature? What about stretched out for a banner on our building? Is it too similar to someone else's?

With all that said, -- the logos in the article are all pretty generic "safe" logos for more "corporate-like" businesses... which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

protonfish• 12 years ago

Which is why you should just pick a font and write out the name of your company. Most of the rest of logo "design" is just cruft.

MikeKusold• 12 years ago

I think that he is a little unfair in the "Roofs and cubic buildings" category. Most of those are for real estate companies, and they have some variation. As long as a competitor doesn't have a very similar logo, these are very good for real estate companies.

thisjepisje• 12 years ago

Satisfaction is a great font though.

krzrak2• 12 years ago

I find it completely illegible. But maybe it's just me...

ThomPete2• 12 years ago

People generally misinterpret the role of a logo.

It's purpose is not to be unique but to be rememberable.

That's all that really matters (and of course not offending people)

gkoberger3• 12 years ago

I would add that the point of a logo is to convey what the company does.

These logos may not be unique, but I do instantly know "Oh this is a law firm" or "Ah, they sell houses".

These are local businesses with no intention of global recognition, and using a basic template helps convey what they do at just a glance.

ThomPete2• 12 years ago

Sure but it just not as important as one might think.

ChrisLTD2• 12 years ago

If the point of a logo is to convey what the company does, then just about every classic logo fails.

Just to name a few, the logos for Apple, IBM, Coca-Cola, UPS, Nike, BMW, Shell, McDonalds, and GE give no clues as to what the company does.

emehrkay• 12 years ago

Very surprised not to see the hexagon. I thought that I was being original when creating a hexagon logo, but took a look around and realized that I chose the shape because it was familiar.

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

A good logo is the least of your problems. A property company? go with a set of roofs over your name, a car company? Choose a swishy logo. Make sure your company name is clear and readable and get on with the hundred other things you need to produce million dollar turnover.

Once your company is employing a hundred people, turning over 8 figures then you can afford a rebranding exercise. Before that it's so much procrastination and mental wank.

You live and breathe your company's essence - if that's not what you want, try therapy not logos.

However, it must have taken some time to gather that and is an impressive overview. More power to them.

steanne• 12 years ago

i am relieved that the company named papyrus, who's listed for using a specific font, ISN'T listed for using papyrus.

hxw• 12 years ago

Of course logos from spec work sites will be generic and overused. Good, original logos cost a lot of money.

incision• 12 years ago

As the article admits - 'Although, generally, the quality of work is high...' the general quality of these designs is interesting to me.

Historically, low-quality art and design was a good (though certainly not conclusive) indicator of a low quality product.

These days, every fly by night business can have a slick logo, every shovelware game can gleam in stills thanks to the underlying engine and every inane YouTuber has a pre-roll that could pass for a major studio.

All at once barriers to entrance are lower, reach is wider and and filtering becomes much harder. Social networks and learning/recommendation features feel like logical if not simply necessary conclusions in response.

GFischer3• 12 years ago

I think there are interesting opportunities there, for curated content :)

For example, I want an equivalent of "TV channels" with varied programming for, say, Netflix, and while YouTube does have channels, it's not easy for myself to discover them (it takes a lot of time and there's no easy branding to ease the discovery process).

Edit: I agree that most of those logos do look pretty good. And things like Bootstrap have lowered the barrier needed for a website to look professional. Both are good things, but make using old heuristics for filtering ineffective :)

notahacker• 12 years ago

Social networks and learning/recommendation features are a cause of rather than the solution to this problem.

These cookie-cutter logos are churned out in "design competitions" where designers have social proof of what people actually buy and/or their peers upvote to base their designs on. The conclusion is that using the last set of successful designs as a template is far more likely to be chosen than anything genuinely original (as well as quicker to knock out when you're not being paid by the hour and the tools you have at your disposal are very conducive to tweaking). See also the dominance of the "ten reasons why this Buzzfeed article will grab more attention than your thoroughly-researched article" school of churnalism. Ultimately, lowering the barriers to becoming a gatekeeper or influencer has a far worse effect on quality than lowering the barriers to producing something vaguely competent, and both flood the market with mediocrity.

On the flip-side, many well known companies spend millions on rebranding and get similarly generic logos, and ten years ago the people commissioning most of these would probably have wound up with something involving clipart.

themodelplumber• 12 years ago

These days, every fly by night business can have a slick logo

As a logo designer, I'm surprised at how much I think this is true but don't actually observe it much. It does happen, but the majority of businesses still seem to pay for worse logos than they deserve, and the majority of come-and-go businesses also fall into that grouping nicely.

I'm learning, BTW, that even the website experience is a good gauge (well, better than a logo in significant ways) of the quality of the brand.

pm2• 12 years ago

Honestly I think these logos are low-quality, because there is no thought put behind their creation.

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

These all seem fine. Honestly, if your company is something incredibly generic like _______ Capital Strategies, then a generic logo with some letters and an arrow is perfectly acceptable.

jccooper• 12 years ago

I like the "Direct Capital Group", which manages to fit three categories at the same time.

alex_doom• 12 years ago

Those all look like they are made in those dime-store logo factories. They charge $100-500 for some copy'n'paste shapes that the client "loves" because it looks just like their competitor.

tedchs• 12 years ago

Looks like this is one of the "most overused Web servers" at the moment. HTTP errors about mod_slotlimit.

mantesso• 12 years ago

I'd add these ones: http://yourlogoisnothardcore.tumblr.com

jwallaceparker• 12 years ago

When I was young my great-grandfather started a tanning business, in the sense that he was a tanner who produced leather goods.

He had to buy a sign to put above his shop. The sign maker asked him if he wanted to put a logo on the sign, too.

"Why?" asked my grandfather.

"So people will recognize your business," said the sign maker.

"That's what the name is for," answered grandfather.

Even at the time I thought this was an interesting perspective.

I always remember that day because afterward when the sign maker left the next person to come into the tanning store was a woman from a nearby dessert shop who gave us free ice cream cones.

Unrelated to logo design, that woman later married my uncle!

Retric• 12 years ago

Logos seem more important in the physical realm than the digital one. Great for advertizing on Bilbords, shirts, TV etc but meaningless when the goal is to click the link not remember the company.

Gustomaximus2• 12 years ago

There is still plenty of awareness generation on digital ads, especially desktop. Across I few products/brands I have monitored this effect. Typically I find on desktop display ads you will generate 2-4 additional visitors for every on ad click. Mobile interestingly is significantly less, more like an extra 0.5 visitors for each click generated.

More than logos, you need consistent and recognisable look and feel to an advert. This way the companies presence is communicated at a glace, which is what most people offer to digital ads.

Gustomaximus2• 12 years ago

Given this was a 'great-grandfather' story a logo could have served a secondary purpose. As literacy rates were much lower having an identifiable business symbol like a barber pole would help people who couldn't read. Also there's no reason a name cant be a logo e.g. Google.

timthorn• 12 years ago

What's interesting to me (as an Englishman with family connections to the USA) is that all the logos feel very American. I can't put my finger on why, but there's something that marks them out as coming from that culture.

mojuba• 12 years ago

I think it is characteristic to the American entrepreneurship culture to "reuse" success stories. The public likes your blockbuster? Make a sequel or even a shameless copy. It will yield less profit than the original obviously, but may prove to be more profitable than some new untested experimental idea.

I don't think the logos in this article have anything specifically American in them, it's just the reuse culture. First time you see a logo of a real estate agnecy with a nice abstract roof you say "wow, this is cool". In the US it means it will be copied a thousand times until it starts annoying everyone. Then it's time for a new "wow" idea.

Kluny• 12 years ago

They also invented the concept of national flags. Might have something to do with that.

krallja2• 12 years ago

Really big citation needed.

vacri2• 12 years ago

What if 'bbc' was used instead of 'abc'? :)

DanBC2• 12 years ago

Can someone explain the first example?

A name with an arc through the name. What's the design purpose? Because most of them look a bit like the name has been crossed out.

I could understand it if the arcs were behind the name - that would mean the name is kind of hovering over a sphere. But lots of the examples show the name behind that arc.

EDIT: one of the later categories is "Use of the font 'satisfaction'". I looked and thought that some of the names were using a different font, because I was sure that Altus was Atlus (even though Atlus isn't a word). So I guess that design really fails? (I misread some others - "street bitch"; "sleet your bed". I don't have any reading problem that I'm aware of. I am a bit tired. But how would someone guard against that kind of problem with their logo?)

Complaining about use of spheres seems a tad harsh - there aren't many solids and spheres are less distracting than most others.

bhickey• 12 years ago

Can someone explain the first example?

I think the arc is the Earth.

grayclhn2• 12 years ago

"Franklin Family Foundation" is a striking example.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

Okay, that makes sense. Except it's so poorly executed in some examples that it doesn't look like the name hovering above a planet, but a name that's just been crossed out.

pm2• 12 years ago

Bad designers love the swoosh. It's a "graphic element", for when you're too lazy to think of an idea.

WaxProlix• 12 years ago

So if these are instances of a bad logo, what makes a good one?

awendt• 12 years ago

See “What Makes A Great Logo”, http://www.code-interactive.com/thinker/a112.html

jleader• 12 years ago

I liked "Midwest Dental Arts", in the group described as "The company's acronym cut in two colors by an arc (usually Trajan font)". All the other logos in the group have a downwards-concave arc; the dental logo is concave upwards, like a smile. It may be a little hokey, but it's the only one in the group that's playing with the cliche.

jedberg• 12 years ago

The best advice I ever heard about logos was from Mat Groening, creator of Simpsons and Futurama. He said, "Whenever I make a main character, I try to make them recognizable as a simple black and white silhouette". Think about Bart, Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bender, Fry, Leela. All of them instantly recognizable with just a few solid lines.

If you do the same with your logo, it will be super memorable and recognizable. Think about all the best ones -- Nike, Apple, Mcdonalds. The reddit logo and HN's "Y" follow that rule too.

grayclhn2• 12 years ago

The Heartbleed logo comes immediately to mind as well.

The most overused logos, at the moment

Related Stories