Logorrhea

This post has been brewing for a while…

It’s about a logo.

SFR is the second-largest mobile phone carrier in France. They have stores everywhere, they advertise like crazy, and they are folding other brands under the SFR banner.

Which is probably why they decided to redesign their logo. The decision was probably long overdue.

Consider their old logo:

It’s pretty damn ugly and old-fashioned. The horrible bezel. The ugly lettering.

This is one of the richest, high-tech corporations in France (ISP, mobile phones etc.). They had to do something.

So they did this:

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

On the face of it, yes, it looks more modern.

But it sends shivers down my spine. Because it is one of the worst logos I have ever seen in my life.

I won’t comment on the font. Although I certainly could.

Consider the drop shadow behind the letters: Uneven, random depth, thickness and intensity.

Now compare that to the drop shadow behind the big red square: different intensity, different distance.

Now consider the shadow and lighting effects inside the red square. Do you see it? No, not the butt-ugly shiny reflection in the lower right corner.

That’s right, the drop shadows on the letters and the outside of the square suggest a light source coming from the top right…

…while the shadows and highlights inside the square suggest a stronger light source coming from the bottom right.

I wasn’t able to find out who designed the logo (I didn’t search that hard), but I hope it wasn’t a professional design firm. Because it is worse than PC/PowerPoint « art ».

It makes me literally ill. It is disturbing not only to the eye, but to my inner ear. It ruins my day, it ruins my faith in humanity, it makes me ashamed to belong to the same species as the person(s) who designed it, and those who chose it as their emblem.

And I just had to get it off my chest.