Time for our own re-branding?
Doing a bit of work on a new web project, on which I’ll have more to say later this week, but one thing I can say from working on some of the design elements is that when it comes to working on graphics for the Internet, our dear old Rose logo is an absolute dog to work with.
I do apologise in advance if that offends anyone who harbours any measure of affection for it, but seriously, in simple design terms, just about everything about is wrong.
The colour scheme - red and green - is one that any sensible designer does their best to avoid for very good reason. Not only is it difficult to come up with shades that work together harmoniously but for the 10% or so of the male population who have red-green colour blindness, the whole colur scheme is entirely meaningless.
And as for the actual image, well one of absolute hallmarks of a well-designed logo is scaleability - do it right and a logo should look as good as a small on-screen image as it does on a large sign in the street. That’s a test that the rose fails and fails miserably - it doesn’t matter what you do, try to bring it down to a size and resultion usable on the Internet and it just looks plain crap, unimposing, weedy and all rather feeble. It’s just not an image you can work with on the net.
So I wonder if its time for a change to something altogether more imposing and solid by way of a logo - the old red flag design may be out of fashion in political terms, but from a design point of view it worked, it had a strong, solid look about it that caught the eye, something the rose distinctly lacks.
Worth thinking about? I think so, just so long as whatever else we do, we don’t hire whoever it was who came up with the Tories new ‘green elephant taking a piss’ design - anything’s got to be better than that.
Posted by Unity on 30 Oct 2006 at 11:46 am
on 30 Oct 2006 at 4:23 pm 1.Bob Piper said …
I think the Rose was ditched by the leadership a few years ago in exchange for that red box design with New Labour, No Priciples written on it.
on 30 Oct 2006 at 4:29 pm 2.Unity said …
Now, there’s the rub, Bob.
The rose was never officially ditched by the party - in fact it’s on the latest design of membership card, albeit in a truncated form and unusually looks quite natty in that format - it just looks bloody awful any other time its used, especially in full with the thin gree stalk that goes on forever.