Posted: May 20, 2010 2:35 am
shh wrote:LIFE wrote:Ain't that just personal preference
Famous logos like Wikipedia, Wal Mart, AOL, Sony are all caps and I'm sure at least the last 3 must have had the budget to pitch some decent logos, no?
To some degree it is, but the legibility thing is a fact. Also, AOL is different because it's initials, IBM is similar, and the others are famous brands, not famous logos. Other than Nike I can't think of a classic logo that's all caps, and with Nike it's actually the swoosh that's classic, not the logotype.
The legibility thing is true, but it's the sort of thing that's more important in road signs than company logos. There are as many all caps as regular logos. Pepsi have just changed to all lower case, but they've been all caps for years. I've got a bar of Dairy Milk chocolate next to me, and that's all caps too, even if the Cadbury bit isn't. I've also got my Barclays bank card reader, which has an all-caps logo, and I'm typing this on my Dell laptop, which is all caps. I can see electrical products by Bush, Humax, Toshiba, Philips and Pure, all in all-caps. And just for balance, I've got a letter from Specsavers, which is written normally. And they should know about reading.
Perhaps most interesting, since you said this, I thought I'd check out some movie posters, because they have that thing of never usually being an automatically recognisable logo, and having to catch people's attention in public and presumably be fairly legible, as well as being longer than your usual logo. And they're practically all all-caps. Look at all of the most successful films in history. All of the Star Wars, Avatar, Titanic, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean, Jurassic Park, Spiderman, Shrek, hell, even Gone with the Wind. Harry Potter is the only one I can find that isn't. I dunno if that's just a movie thing, but it doesn't seem to have done them any harm.
Tbh, I think people should just do what they think looks best for their particular design. Anyway, I've officially given up after realising I lack both the drawing ability and the photoshop skills to do it.