The New Logos

Today Pierre gives us part one of a series of articles where he examines what he thinks about the DESIGN of the new DC Relaunch, starting today with the new logos. In his article he asks that I submit my opinions in a separate post, but I am far to lazy thought it would be more fun to just chime in here. - Jim

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Last week  we got the first week of DCnU comics, and it seems that every one of their comics seems to be selling like hot cake ( or something like that),  And some are all actually good (OMAC was AWESOME!! Loved JLI, Batgirl and Swamp Thing). I could nitpick about how in Action Comics (everyone on that train should be dead) or how the only explanation we got for Barbara Gordon walking is that it was “a miracle”, but I won’t. All of them comics were good solid comics so far. The only one I didn’t like was Batwing. Not that it is a bad comic; I just did not like it.

But today, let’s look at some of the logo designs.

For the new logo designs, Many of them are pretty much uninspiring. Too many of them are done using an existing type,  but distorting it or adding a cool element behind it like a Bat or something. The best ones are the ones that they did not attempt to fix like “Superman” or “Swamp Thing”.



Jim: Yeah, I agree, that's a classic that echoes the feel that this comic has returned to it's 80's pre-vertigo feel. In many ways, this new Swamp Thing feels like something that could have come out 20 years ago, and I mean that in a good way. As a reader who hasn't looked at a Swamp Thing comic since the Alan Moore/Rick Veitch era, this logo feels like a Welcome Home doormat.

PIERRE: My favourite amongst the new logos that they “tried” to fix HAS to be “Omac”. Although I can’t help it but read it as “Qmac”.



Jim: As much as I enjoyed this comic, the logo has not quite grown on me. I tend to like technique (cutouts) but this design feels too busy to me what with the combined circuit board elements and gradient fills. One design I did like a lot was the new Batgirl logo:



JIM: This logo has a nice retro Broadway (or Fritz Lang Metropolis) feel to it that seems to promise us a story with more style and sophistication than your average sock 'em up superhero book - a promise that that so far has been unfulfilled IMHO. Still, the logo is very sleek and clean and fits the title better than the generic words coming at you type of logo that so many comics seem to favor. Like this one for Justice League International:



PIERRE: I understand that the design team must have been overwhelmed.  Heck I have been there in the past. I can imagine that any given month, they have a handful of new logos and stuff like that to come up with. And then someone decides they need 52 new logos and added that task to the workload of the design team with barely more resources than usual to pull it off.

It is not unusual for people in charge to decide on something,  without giving any thoughts as to who will have to roll up their sleeves and work up like crazy to make it happen,  and expecting them to pull it off,  even when what they demand is completely unreasonable. It takes about 3 seconds to decide, “Hey! Let’s have 52 new logos for our comics”. But making them 52 new logos takes A LOT more than 3 seconds.

I am sure that the “bosses” were generous enough to offer to allow some extra time for the design team. By extra time, what I mean is making sure that the studio is open late so they can stay late at night at the studio, or make sure that the studio is open during the week-end for the team to be able to come in and produce the extra work.  I can imagine their workload exploding and needing a lot of over time, and a lot of lack of sleep. So I can’t really blame them for cutting corners and not coming up with them new logos from scratch. And ultimately, I don’t think it will really matter in the BIG scheme of things.

JIM: Ha! Yeah, I have been involved in more than my fair share of such slapdash projects with companies I've worked with. so I can sympathize too. And while I can't say for certain that's what went on here, it seems likely given what we know about how quickly some of these creative teams for the new 52 were pulled together. On the flip side, giving the titles new logos in some cases helps underscore the newness of the books. (Though many of them feel less than new.)

PIERRE: Still, it feels like a wasted effort in some cases. I strongly doubt that anyone will refuse to purchase any of the new comics because it has an old logo.  In fact, up here in Canada, we  even bought comics when the logos didn't quite work as well as they did in English:




Have a great day!

- Pierre