Comments on: University of California's new logo

By: benher

benher — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 12:01:00 +0000

I didn’t realize we could just photoshop superior comments! Awesome!

By: Girard

Girard — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 05:10:00 +0000

Nope. The monogram is what was used as the basis for the motifs in the logo. Both images will continue to be used by the university, but in different capacities.

By: Girard

Girard — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 05:06:00 +0000

Well, to be fair, the old one looks like an utterly generic 19th-century bookplate or masthead logo. Neither is great. The first functions better as a seal, the second one functions better as a logo. Which, luckily, is apparently how the two images will be put to use from here on out.

By: Girard

Girard — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 05:02:00 +0000

If by “this place” you mean the UC schools, you’re mistaken, as the seal and the logo will both continue to be used, as you described.
If by “this place” you mean Boing Boing…well, I don’t know the answer,

By: ohbejoyful

ohbejoyful — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 04:08:00 +0000

No, it’s always just been a big C. There is a tradition to go up and repaint it the night before the annual football game with Stanford.

By: myke

myke — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 23:51:00 +0000

It seems everyone has missed the most useful feature of the new logo design. If it is meant to appear on brochures and advertisement (mentioned in the article), it is perfectly suited for California High School Seniors as it does not require literacy to understand. It may actually be somewhat more difficult for the litterate because the ‘U’ and ‘C’ (particularly with gradient) are poor representations of the actual characters. A truly appropriate representation of and for the California educational system.

No, I’m not bitter :)

By: Chris Worley

Chris Worley — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 22:51:00 +0000

I guess my point is the seal is not going away. It will still appear on official stationary and letters from the UC. However, the new logo will replace dozens of different type faces and home-grown logos to try and give a comprehensive branding approach. The seal is not going away.

By: cleveremi

cleveremi — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 20:02:00 +0000

Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m just an oldster who remembers, fondly, the days of written evaluations (instead of grades). Ah, the good old days… now I have to go because there are kids. on. my. lawn.

By: nate

nate — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:02:00 +0000

But you see, eventually our university system will become an app (see Coursera, for example). This new logo is slightly ahead of its time, but not much, and you can look forward to seeing this pretty little icon on a touch screen near you when the university system re-boots as College 2.0.

By: Festus

Festus — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:54:00 +0000

Funny, I got much more irritated after watching the video. Maybe because I am an historian and know a bit about why and how the original logo was chosen. The original is gracious, it is elegant, it lasted through many technological and social changes. The new one is destined to be replaced in a few years by something equally awful and short-lived. Why?

By: Festus

Festus — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:52:00 +0000

It is really difficult to get grads of California, UCLA, Davis and the rest to agree on anything. Congratulations, terrible overpaid branding folks, you’ve done it! We all hate what you are trying to do to a perfectly lovely and serviceable “brand.”

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:46:00 +0000

That’s not a logo. It’s the University seal, and it’s not actually being replaced.

By: oligonucleotide

oligonucleotide — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:40:00 +0000

The problem may be that neither the old logo nor the new one look good…

By: oligonucleotide

oligonucleotide — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:38:00 +0000

They should keep the old logo but put an iPad istead of the book

By: oligonucleotide

oligonucleotide — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:32:00 +0000

This is exactly it LOL

By: Bob Webb

Bob Webb — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:18:00 +0000

It’s the yellow/blue colour scheme and awful jpg compression, isn’t it?

By: Faith Landsman

Faith Landsman — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:05:00 +0000

It could be the logo from a UC Peyronie’s disease research group.

By: gmills

gmills — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:25:00 +0000

Oski wept.

By: Gijs Peetsold

Gijs Peetsold — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:12:00 +0000

Thank you, you just saved me 3 minutes of photoshopping. And:

“I see designers get their ideas at the same place as the rest of us.”

Again, thanks.

I feel better now.

By: hexopogs

hexopogs — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:51:00 +0000

Looks almost exactly like a Ziiiro watch face.

By: penguinchris

penguinchris — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:11:00 +0000

When I was an undergrad, my university changed the logo when I was a senior. I didn’t have anything with the logo on it – and didn’t realize I’d actually want things with the school’s logo on it at some point in my life, so I didn’t rush to buy things with the original logo – and now I can’t buy anything out of principle.

I wouldn’t be surprised if UC schools kept some things with the original logo around in the shops, though.

By: Deermag

Deermag — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:46:00 +0000

i cant see this. It’s still didn’t loaded yet

By: fergus1948

fergus1948 — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 10:08:00 +0000

I think that’s why other commenters have pointed out that putting a gradient in a logo is almost certainly bound to end in tears.

By: TheMudshark

TheMudshark — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 09:47:00 +0000

Yeah, the gradient is just frivolous.

By: TheMudshark

TheMudshark — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 09:45:00 +0000

Whatever else it is, it is more distinctive than the old one. A bunch of stuff with circular writing around it? There must be tens of thousands of logos like that.

By: lishevita

lishevita — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 09:14:00 +0000

It hurts. I am a sad bear now.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 07:57:00 +0000

It sounds like you’re trying to posit yourself as a member of the tribe that’s Just Too Clever To Be Taken In By People Who Claim To Know About “Design”.

By: Jens Reuterberg

Jens Reuterberg — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 06:55:00 +0000

Yeah… I thought it was ok. Not great but ok and better than the old one. Wasn’t there a post like this a few months back where people got really huffy about some new character design on a box of cereal? … They thought it was too unrealistic or something?

Same kind of whine-fest where people proved their design-skills by saying something was bad (in the same way I “prove” my 1337-hacker skills by saying commonplace like “Vista was badly made”).
Or that Jesus-image remade by a Spanish woman. Allot of people who couldn’t draw a pair of boobs to save their life got all huffy and snort-laughing without even contemplating the difference between art-by-school or art-by-emotion.

The trick here I think is just join the crowd of snort-laughers – or let them get on with it – because it has nothing to do with aesthetics and all about identity creation by agreement.

By: Wingnut

Wingnut — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:26:00 +0000

I have no opinion on this.

By: Andy Reilly

Andy Reilly — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:12:00 +0000

FTW! Couldn’t agree more. This isn’t a matter of lay people critiquing the more esoteric elements of design or design theory. It’s a matter of a logo that does almost nothing of what a logo is supposed to do and it doesn’t take a designer to recognize that.