Logo gone wrong

Ever so often you come by a bad logo. A logo that doesn’t communicate what the company stands for, that doesn’t incite you, or a logo that’s just plain hideous. There are also logo’s that seem to communicate the completely opposite message. Today I found out about such a logo:

Fund for Mentally Challenged.

Forgive me when I don’t use P.C. terms in this article. I will rectify them when needed.

A charity organisation, “Fonds verstandelijk gehandicapten“, recently started an advertising campaign for their fund raising. This is the logo they use:

Please tell me in the replies what your association with this is:

Mastercard! “We are a charity, give us your money.”
“Mentally challenged people, you should throw striped balls at them.”
“Hitting small mentally challenged children with striped balls will help them get better.”
None of the above. liar.

Mastercard

Nothing says ‘give us money’ like copying the shape of a well-known credit card brand, right? What were they thinking?

“Mentally challenged people, you should throw striped balls at them.”

As indicated by the small stripes at the bottom of the ball, it’s coming at the girl at great velocity. Why would you want to communicate such a thing? Also, the ball is covering up half of her face. Is the girl missing an eye? I don’t get it!!

“Hitting small mentally challenged children with striped balls will help them get better.”

Similar to the one above, this links the visible elements of the logo to a message. I can’t think of any reason why you would throw a ball at a small girl, so I’ll just tie the visuals to the goal of the charity: Helping mentally challenged people. Hitting a small kid with a ball probably won’t help, but hey, they’re the experts.

Guesswork

I can only guess why the logo is like it is now. I can understand the small kid. I can’t understand the ball coming at her at great velocity causing a mastercard-effect. Perhaps the creator used it to overcome a trauma left over from dodge ball in his/her childhood.

Friendlier Alternatives

Though, with the basic shapes in the logo, you can easily create much friendlier logo’s with more apparent meanings:

girl holding the ball
This one is much friendlier. It doesn’t have the mastercard-effect, it doesn’t make it seem as if the ball is coming at the girl at great speed, and both the girls’ eyes are visible. This makes for an open logo, and even though the girl lacks a body it can be easily envisioned that she’s holding the ball in her hands. It seems as if she is offering the ball to you, encouraging people to share.

girl throwing the ball to someone else
This one keeps the original elements, but with a twist: There are now two girls in the picture, where one girl is throwing the ball to the other, with a slight loop in it: they’re playing a game together. This puts emphasis on the “together” part, something that you want to create for a charity. It’s a charity that is helping people out there, and making them happy in the process.

Recoup

So, to recoup. What was your first thought when you saw the logo, and can you explain why? Do you have similar “logo’s gone wrong” that you would like to share? Any better idea’s for a logo? Let us know in the comments!

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Logo gone wrong,” an entry on KilianValkhof.com

Published:: Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 18:00

Category:: Design

2 Comments

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Wouter Klein Heerenbrink September 28th, 2007
19:02 CEST

Hi Kilian,

Nice article, again. I do agree with you that the logo doesn’t speak in a way that it should. Nevertheless I think that you’re arguments are a bit weak. The MasterCard part is totally true, but option 2 and 3 are just funny and useless. Nothing wrong with that, but you forgot the serious ones. You could at least try to give us some serious interpretation :-p.

First the Mastercard. Totally true. The orange is almost the same (MasterCard: ~#FE0, this one ~#FB0), the “red” (k, magenta.. but hey, that’s more red than blue or green:-p) too, the stripes and then the circular objects overlapping each other. True true true, but MasterCard wasn’t the first thing that came to mind. Nothing did actually (btw, ‘bout logo’s and wrong interpretation… MasterCard has used Red(debt) which rolls into (because of the stripes) Gold(cash) or VISA versa. You could interpret this as “hey, get out of debt with MasterCard” or “hey, get into debt with MasterCard”. Anyhoe).

But to get serious.
First thing you see while looking at the logo is the word “fonds” (Fund) because of the colours and saturation they’ve used (I admit, depending on the angle in which you look at it, it could also be the ugly balllll). I think that is a good thing. The next thing would be “verstandelijk gehandicapten”. So after a glance you know “Fonds, Verstandelijk gehandicapten”. I think it does tell what it’s about.
But then the image. I see a (female?) child… lately a few female organisms did some crazy stuff, but that doesn’t mean they’re mentally challenged. Still crazy, but nothing more. Further… mentally challenged do not especially die at young age… so why the kid. The orange ball is placed over or in the head of the child. Which could indicate a piece of the child which is kind of unnatural. A more logical meaning would be that the orange ball != a ball, but simply a coin (like the MasterCard one ;-)). You insert a coin into the pour little kid so it will be able to play again (like a jukebox). The stripes are a mystery to me… can’t think of anything… the white vertical twisted lines are even a bigger mystery. If you wouldn’t look a the orange thingy as a coin, but something else, you could see it as the society (hehe, long shot). The horizontal lines stand for all the people that are “normal” and the vertical twisted ones stand for the handicapped ones. Maybe the orange thing is a sunny. “let the sunshine… let the sunshine in…”.

Long story, time for a conclusion.
- the words “Fonds” and “Verstandelijk Gehandicapten” aren’t that bad…
- why the female kid…
- I’m not sure if “gimme a coin and I’ll play again” is the wanted image…
- Let the sunshine… I’ve heard that song too much… if I now have to see it in images too I will go crazy, not an option
- And alright, you got me… hard to stay serious with this weird logo.

Wout
Kilian Valkhof September 28th, 2007
19:18 CEST

In the article I didn’t focus on the text. You’re completely right that the writing clearly communicates what is written. That’s one of the virtue’s of written text, after all Nevertheless, it’s the imagery that needs explaining, or at least clarification, which I try to do. (and the text doesn’t mean anything to english readers, anyway )

Good call about the colours, I hadn’t realised their similarity yet (I only focussed on the shape)

I thought about the idea of it being a coin, but with the horizontal stripes, the comical “movement” stripes and the fact that it’s ginormous and placed over the girls head made me discard that idea.

your last idea is very, very conceptual and, however highly interesting, I don’t think they would want to communicate that with a logo :p

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