A critique...
Oct. 6th, 2009 02:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tencrushOh, and if you consider this spoilers, then... meh.
I hated the old logo. I thought it was hideous. I hated the organicy feel to it, the fleshy, warm colours, the strange mottled autumnal look of all the peripheral stuff, the website, the toy packaging, all of it seemed off to me, and not very sci-fi. Blue is sci-fi. That's a bit of an old-fashioned thing to think, I know, but those warm colours just never worked for me.
This is more like it. "Like it," I say, because it's not great. I love the little TARDIS idea, and I'm hoping the flare on the "DOCTOR WHO" lettering isn't permanent, or maybe is animated in the title sequence? It's a bit flarey for my tastes. Having said that, it's a bit cheap and nasty. My main niggles (I warn you, I take fonts very seriously, you may not know this about me, but I do):
The perspective on the DW is too strictly done. By which I mean the font suffers from the perspective, I think it would have been nicer to compensate for the perspective transformation by widening the second black gap on the W a bit, for example, maybe making the three uprights on the W slightly more equal in width as well. This is how these two letters would look in perspective, yes, but perhaps this isn't the best these two letters could look in (somewhat tinkered with) perspective, you know?
The reason for this perspective weirdness is the simple fact that in the flat font, the W is wider than the D. In the little TARDIS logo, the D has been stretched to make it as wide as the W. That's cheating. And that looks weird because among other things, it makes the black gap inside the D wider than the first black gap in the W which, given the width of the uprights, should logically be closer to our eyes.
The corner of the TARDIS light (see my terribly helpful red lines) does not correspond with the corner of the TARDIS shape formed by the two letters. Making the distance from the TARDIS light to the D smaller than the distance from the light to the W (blue lines). Having said this, yes, I think it's clever how they made the serifs in the D and W of DOCTOR WHO stick out to the left and right, so that you get a little more of a TARDISy effect when you put those letters next to each other. HOWEVER, the serifs on the rest of the letters just seem a bit random.
There's way too much white space (yes, it's black, I know) here for my liking. That C could have been closed up a bit. It's not the greatest font when it comes to white space because it's impossible to fix white space problems with creative spacing, the font's not round enough. And in the end, that's what makes this look like A FONT and not A LOGO. It's just the words "doctor who," written in A NEW FONT, sadly, a font that doesn't really lend itself to the CTO letter combination.
Making a LOGO requires creative font use and I'm not really seeing that here. A bit of redrawing here, and bit of clever spacing there, maybe redesigning one or two letters to fit with the specific words you're using, I'm not seeing any of those things. My inner graphic designer says go back and try harder.
I like it a lot more than I liked the old one. But it seems hugely fucking lazy to me.
(ETA: Having expanded on all my anal niggles with the logo, I do have to admit that my initial reaction upon seeing it was "AWESOME!!" Just so, you know, you don't think I'm a whiny bitch about these things. I do like it.)
I hated the old logo. I thought it was hideous. I hated the organicy feel to it, the fleshy, warm colours, the strange mottled autumnal look of all the peripheral stuff, the website, the toy packaging, all of it seemed off to me, and not very sci-fi. Blue is sci-fi. That's a bit of an old-fashioned thing to think, I know, but those warm colours just never worked for me.
This is more like it. "Like it," I say, because it's not great. I love the little TARDIS idea, and I'm hoping the flare on the "DOCTOR WHO" lettering isn't permanent, or maybe is animated in the title sequence? It's a bit flarey for my tastes. Having said that, it's a bit cheap and nasty. My main niggles (I warn you, I take fonts very seriously, you may not know this about me, but I do):
The perspective on the DW is too strictly done. By which I mean the font suffers from the perspective, I think it would have been nicer to compensate for the perspective transformation by widening the second black gap on the W a bit, for example, maybe making the three uprights on the W slightly more equal in width as well. This is how these two letters would look in perspective, yes, but perhaps this isn't the best these two letters could look in (somewhat tinkered with) perspective, you know?
The reason for this perspective weirdness is the simple fact that in the flat font, the W is wider than the D. In the little TARDIS logo, the D has been stretched to make it as wide as the W. That's cheating. And that looks weird because among other things, it makes the black gap inside the D wider than the first black gap in the W which, given the width of the uprights, should logically be closer to our eyes.
The corner of the TARDIS light (see my terribly helpful red lines) does not correspond with the corner of the TARDIS shape formed by the two letters. Making the distance from the TARDIS light to the D smaller than the distance from the light to the W (blue lines). Having said this, yes, I think it's clever how they made the serifs in the D and W of DOCTOR WHO stick out to the left and right, so that you get a little more of a TARDISy effect when you put those letters next to each other. HOWEVER, the serifs on the rest of the letters just seem a bit random.
There's way too much white space (yes, it's black, I know) here for my liking. That C could have been closed up a bit. It's not the greatest font when it comes to white space because it's impossible to fix white space problems with creative spacing, the font's not round enough. And in the end, that's what makes this look like A FONT and not A LOGO. It's just the words "doctor who," written in A NEW FONT, sadly, a font that doesn't really lend itself to the CTO letter combination.
Making a LOGO requires creative font use and I'm not really seeing that here. A bit of redrawing here, and bit of clever spacing there, maybe redesigning one or two letters to fit with the specific words you're using, I'm not seeing any of those things. My inner graphic designer says go back and try harder.
I like it a lot more than I liked the old one. But it seems hugely fucking lazy to me.
(ETA: Having expanded on all my anal niggles with the logo, I do have to admit that my initial reaction upon seeing it was "AWESOME!!" Just so, you know, you don't think I'm a whiny bitch about these things. I do like it.)
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 01:35 pm (UTC)I'm still on the fence about it.
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Date: 2009-10-06 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 03:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 04:36 pm (UTC)I knew there were things about it that seemed off to me, but your handy red lines brought them into focus. Thank you!
May I link to this post?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 04:44 pm (UTC)Your analysis was brought up several times for its awesomeness. :)
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 09:52 pm (UTC)Also, haha, I love all the previous fiery/organic design you seem to hate. I think it suited Doctor Who, 'cause it's so unlike ordiary sci-fi. And it was pretty.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 10:32 pm (UTC)My second thought was, oh look, they let the same people who thought killing off a show's most interesting character was a good idea design the new logo for one of the world's most beloved institutions.
My third thought. It's still ugly and soul-less, but I don't really care because what they did to Torchwood has cauterized any part of me that really cares about the Dr Who franchise moving forward, as they say.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 02:23 am (UTC)But I love the TARDIS idea.
Then there is just something I don't like about the wording on the left. Maybe it is what you say about the white space. I'm still trying to put my finger on it.
Nicole
no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 08:44 pm (UTC)They definitely should have spent another few minutes on the new DW logo, though... Now that you've pointed out the TARDIS light not being in the right spot, that's going to bother me every time I see it.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 08:25 pm (UTC)