Too often we over-analyze new logos out of context — spending far too much time examining them alone on-screen or on a solitary presentation board as though they were a Pollock to interpret. In reality, the other half of the logo development equation (and what should be presented when a new ID is under consideration) is how the new mark will be used.
Thursday Comedy Central unveiled a new logo that will be implemented this January. While this is an overdue replacement of the dated block letters and flailing skyscrapers of their current logo, it feels a bit … stark to me. Cold and closed off rather than the warm openness we traditionally associate with comedy. Though as your mind starts wrapping itself around the smaller ‘C’ enveloped in a larger backward ‘C,’ you start to realize that maybe the logo is just as clever and wry as Jon Stewart’s wit. Maybe the word ‘Central’ is turned upside down like Stephen Colbert’s take on blow-hard pundits. Maybe it does fit the network’s voice — their true brand — better than some initially think.
However, the new Comedy Central logo really starts working for me when you see their vision for using it as illustrated in the video below. The copyright-looking mark actually serves to brand the network’s comedy. This is fitting given the fact that Stewart and Colbert have taken the mantle as some of the more relevant voices of our time. It’s only fair that their network makes an effort to mark them. It’s also prescient when you remember that Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom is still in the midst of a $1 billion copyright suit against Google and YouTube largely for unauthorized use of content. Thus the new logo serves a true business objective — the need to mark their content. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Most of all though, the video shows that the real function of the new ID is both to better demonstrate the brand’s irreverence and to package the network as a true icon of the counterculture that so closely identifies with Comedy Central. (WARNING: the video is a bit blue in parts.)
The Brand Driven Insight: The real lesson here is to have a plan for your rebrand. When a logo is redesigned for design’s sake you end up with the PR debacle that bogged down the Gap earlier this fall. While I am a bit ‘meh’ on the design of the new Comedy Central logo itself, seeing the plans for it’s execution this January intrigue me. I also give them planning props for the timing of the launch campaign (new year, new logo).
How about you? Is your logo or brand icon just a 2-D object that sits collecting dust on your letterhead and email signature or is it a living, breathing part of your brand with executions that literally leap off the page?