Entries Tagged as 'branding'

a logo downgrade for buffalo

Besides being Buffalo, New York’s only baseball team, the Buffalo Bisons are a pretty well respected franchise among triple A baseball affiliates. The club is run by a strong ownership and management team.

Which is why I was so incredibly surprised by their recent logo catastrophe.

In 2008, the Bisons ended their long MLB affiliation with the Cleveland Indians and signed with the New York Mets. Mrs. audio’connell grew up a Mets fan so that change pleased this household to no end. I like the Bisons no matter what so I don’t particularly care who they are affiliated with.

However when I saw the new logo the Met’s change brought with it, I was thrilled! A major league looking logo! The team had looked Triple A for so long in its branding, I was pleased to see the upgrade and immediately went out and bought lots of merch!

Well unfortunately for a multitude of reasons, the affiliation with the Mets didn’t work out and the Bisons organization executed a change to affiliate with the Toronto Blue Jays. While not a baseball expert, I think this move will really work out well for the Bisons.

The bad news is the team must have had a covert logo design contest among area 7th Grade design students to help Buffalo create the Bisons new logo under the new affiliation agreement with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Yes, you are seeing correctly, the red, white and blue logo is the NEW logo…not an old resurrected from 1947 logo. That’s the new one.

Shockingly horrible, isn’t it. To call it fugly is to be complimentary.

Are you saying to yourself, why didn’t they just take the Mets logo and change it to the Blue Jays color scheme? I know I asked that question too but then I guessed there might be a legal thing with the Mets on the old logo and oh well.

I look at this logo in the same way I look at our city, regional and state governments here and I ask the same question: is this the best we could do?

peteroconnell.com – i got my name back!

Voice-over web domains are funny things and I should know because I’ve had a ton of them. I’d come up with a cool idea and race to get the domain. The hundreds of dollars I’ve wasted on domains was, well, wasted.

Some people bought really smart voice-over web domains like Doug Turkel who owns voiceovertalent.com. Word on the street was that he may have had to perform unnatural acts to get that domain…like singing opera during a biker convention in Miami, but that’s just a rumor (that I just started in this sentence). Point is, it’s an awesome domain.

But of all the domains I ever registered, the one I could never get was peteroconnell.com. Years ago, I called the guy who had it and we had a very nice conversation…I can’t now even recall if his name WAS Peter O’Connell. He noted at the time he wanted to keep it and I told him to call me if he ever wanted to get rid of it. No call.

Fast forward to about three weeks ago and I get an email which smelled suspiciously like spam. It said the domain peteroconnell.com was up for auction and to click here blah, blah. So I emailed my web guy, who just LOVES hearing from me in the middle of of his weekend, to see if this offer was legit.

It was.

He asked me if I wanted to bid on it? I said I did and I threw out what I considered a low bid.

And I won.

That means I bid too damn high!

Idiot!!!!!! 🙂

Anyway, I’ve had peterkoconnell.com for a long time but now peteroconnell.com is in the hands of his rightful owner and all is right with the world.

So here’s my question to you: of the web addresses you own, which is your most favorite? Also, which web domain would you most like to own that you don’t own now and why?

arby’s new logo – this time, it’s personal!

Since about the age of 18, I have been an ardent supporter of Arby’s.

At UD, many days I would eat there for breakfast lunch and dinner and I still lunch there occasionally. So with all the money I have poured into the place, I have an unofficially vested interest in any branding change, regardless of your opinions of my eating habits.

So when I saw this hideous excuse for a logo change, I asked why? I asked it for two reasons.

1. The current logo describes very nicely the food and ambiance of the stores, especially the newer stores.

2. The new logo looks like crap. I tried to be more artful than that but words failed me.

The new logo is crap and it doesn’t matter what their new branding direction is – if the chain is not going to be Arby’s, then change the name and menu and move on. But if you plan on remaining Arby’s, true to the iconic nature of your brand (build with comparatively little branding vs. it’s main competitors in the fast-food area) then tweak the logo if you must.

Keeping the hat and changing the word mark in this way is more than a tweak, it’s a bastardization and if I was a franchisee with the looming costs involved in changing signage to this new craptastic logo, I would be pissed!

You can offer a differing opinion, but you’ll be wrong! 😉

voice-over license

Are you plagued by those little business oriented tasks that you never get around to even after months or years?

You know, the simple stuff that for whatever reason never seems to get accomplished?

Well, you probably don’t have that problem but I do.

Or in one instance, I can now say, I DID have that problem but now I can check it off my list.

When Mrs. audio’connell and I have purchased new cars, we’ve always agreed that the dealership did NOT get to put their logoed license plate frame or logoed sticker on our cars. It’s only because the dealership wouldn’t pay our $15,000 advertising fee (we go lots of cool places in our cars and our bumpers are seen by all the beautiful and influential people). We thought $15K a very reasonable rate considering it was a one time fee that would cover the life of the car. We even offered to let them take it off invoice.

And yet, no takers.

So our cars are un-dealerized. But I respected the value of that ad space/real estate and I vowed one day, I would claim that space for my own.

I think we bought our last car three years ago so how am I doing on THAT to-do list?!

Well under the category of better late than never, Da’s car now has a lovely etched (high falutin’!) customized license plate frame.

No, we didn’t pay the extra fee for a customized plate (that feels like giving away money to NY State) and no, we will do whatever it takes to AVOID New York State’s fugly orange and blue 1970’s color license plates.

But I like the simple and subtle message on the new plate frame that may not get everyone’s attention…just that special someone, with a voice-over need and a checkbook.

dress nicely if you go out in public

So back in June my friend and fellow voice talent Doug Turkel pinged me about Twitter’s new logo. It’s nice, simple and, I thought to myself given all the different feed services and mobile devices we all use now, maybe a tad irrelevant.

Think about it.

With no scientific data to back this up (because that requires work and this is Sunday etc.) I’ll offer my “expert” (ha!) opinion: I feel with services like HootSuite and others, most of us don’t directly and visually interact with Twitter alot. So I don’t know that we’ll see the new logo too terribly much.

That got me to thinking about MY Twitter home page. As you may or may not know, Twitter allows you to customize your home page with some branding. (Here’s a link to a video if you want to see how it’s done otherwise your graphic designer can probably help you too).

Does my (or yours or anyone’s) home page on Twitter matter any more in our world of feeds or aggregators? Well, I kinda think it does for two reasons…again my “expert” (ha!) opinion.

1. When you’re a business, people expect a certain professionalism to your work. Your design not only conveys what your business does but also it’s attitude and personality. Should someone come across your Twitter page, an impression will be formed. Do you want to risk a bad impression? Probably not but if you really don’t care, I’d also ask why you’d really want a business presence on any Social Media channel.

2. It’s a free, colorful and fun way to convey your business message. It’s so simple that even if only 10 people see it a year, to me it’s money well spent.

Oh, and just in case you are completely clueless (it will be our secret) one of Twitter’s default backgrounds on your Twitter home page is the fastest way ever to publicly communicate that in your personal life you also wear plaid shirts with checked pants.

Dress nicely if you go out in public. 😉

I would love to know your thoughts on the matter.

microsoft reboots logo

It’s not everyday that a major corporation changes its logo. Although throughout its history, Microsoft has had it’s share of logos.

But last week when I saw they’d crafted a new identity, I kinda smiled.

At the beginning of August, I was in Seattle and my hotel was next to the Microsoft campus in Redmond. I didn’t make the time to drive around (which I’m sure I’ll end up regretting) but I saw so many Microsoft signs.

I quickly tabulated, when the new logo was revealed, how much it was going to cost the company to do a signage overhaul across the globe (not even counting the packaging changes).

Boy, there were a lot of people who could live a simple and happy life just off the interest earned from that signage bill.

But ya gotta keep the brand fresh and relevant. And the new look is nice, I think. Here’s a little more info on the logo.