brainstorms

Thursday January 19, 2006

kodak logo design

i am puzzled by this logo. i can see what the designers want: refresh the typeface, remove the iconic but aged reminders of a film past but keep its banner colors. the result is ... um, interesting. here are some thoughts and analysis in terms of lines and shapes, color, balance, space. [this is not very rigorous, but i hope properly observed. i would be interested to know what other designers think]

a disoriented typeface: follow your eyes: K, o, d [hard transition] a [it spins, swirls, throws you back over to d again ... snap out of it] k. very strange, no natural flow here. i am not convinced those bookend Ks belong to this typeface; it must be that d and a are custom. i do not think that initial uppercase K can really balance a's swirl. [round and tail-less "a" and "d" are not common in typeface design with this serious [bitstream] vera-style K. i have consulted quite a number of books on type, and have not been able to spot an analogue.]

frame lines: their thickness do not match the typeface thickness; the space between the lines and the type seems arbitrary. these are not the lightbeams of the original logo; they do not add strength to type, but merely frame it from a distance. their paralellism is further weakened by the formal upper-lower type and the spinning a. they almost set up an optical illusion and appear to bend towards the closing k.

color flip: earlier kodak typeface had the background color now in the frame lines, and the screen/frame had the current typeface color. this switch is bold, if unimaginative [kodak does not really need to carry its historic color baggage] and perhaps a reflection of some new organizational perspective.

size: it is clear logo will reduce and reproduce reasonably well. in smaller sizes, the power of a is diminished; it is just Kodak name. memorable in its moments, even when there is no image left behind.

at the end, i remain puzzled by this weak logo. it would be interesting to know what the designers thought, and how this reflects the new image of kodak.

related reading: david e. carter, logos redesigned: how 200 companies successfully changed their image, june 2005.

[not being able to get away: looking at that tight a again i realize that in kodak, it is a good reminder of a roll of film...]

[addendum: frame lines were removed from the logo in a later release. were the lines a part of an earlier or an alternate design? they are good clues for the designer's vision. removing them solves one design issue, but also removes some color and a potentially useful idea. all that remains in focus is some stuttering typography.]