Year End Top Ten List: Number 2

Continuing my list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year...

2.

Original post here.

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Year End Top Ten List: Number 3

Continuing my list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year...

3.

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Year End Top Ten List: Number 4

Continuing my list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year...

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Year End Top Ten List: Number 5

Sorry for the technical mishap earlier today!

Continuing my list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year...

The correct number fives:

5.

Original post here.

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Year End Top Ten List: Number 6

Merry x.mas!

And continuing my list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year...

6.

Original post here.

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Year End Top Ten List: Number 7

Continuing my list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year...

7.

Original post here.

7.

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Year End Top Ten List: Number 8

Continuing my list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year...

8.

Original post here.

8.

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Year End Top Ten List: Number 9

Continuing my list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year...

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Original post here.

9.

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Year End Top Ten List: Number 10

So I thought I’d close out the year with a list of the ten Pr*ttiest and Sh*ttiest items featured on the blog this year. Mind you, I haven’t been at this all year, but top ten lists seem to be the thing to do as the new year approaches.

I’ll be featuring one item a day from each category. Five this week, five next. And regularly scheduled programming will resume January 4. So, without further ado...

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Original post here.

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Steinway Street Partnership

I’m happy to leave the realm of rebrandings up to Brand New. But sometimes things are too local to be covered there. In this case it’s so local it’s practically in my backyard.

Pr*tty

Clearly something is afoot on Steinway Street. This ad not only uses a nice, clean design and some really fun illustrations, but the new logo is a beautifully drawn bit of typography. Looking just at the identity design, Steinway Street is giving almost anything comparable in Manhattan a run for its money.

Sh*tty

I can only hope this site is soon to be a thing of the past, and the above bus shelter ad isn’t just a fluke. Stay the course Steinway, stay the course!

Kone and ThyssenKrupp

Pr*tty

You have to trust me on this... if you value your toes, spend time being transfixed by how awesome this logo is before you step onto the escalator, not as you’re about to step off of it.

Sh*tty

If Gene Roddenberry had lived longer, he would have created another Star Trek spin-off, where The United Federation of Planets fell victim to a corporate takeover by the Venndiagramians, and henceforth people traveled through space via elevator.

Wednesday Waffler: Lemode Plumbing

I admit, this is kind of a weird one. Something tells me I shouldn’t find this so delightful, but I do. The Bodoni Poster Italic, the illustration that looks like it came out of an old school plumbing how-to, and the name Lemode (so much like commode) create a very charmingly comic whole.

Of course, maybe it’s not a good thing for this sort of business to have a comic image... I’m having trouble being objective here... Pr*tty or Sh*tty?

Solo and Dart

Pr*tty

These guys make cups.

Sh*tty

These guys make... these? (They only wish!)

Foxy and Peter Rabbit Farms

Pr*tty

The highlights on this aren’t necessary, but since they’re there I wish they were drawn better, but overall the Foxy logo is quite charming. The fox silhouette is cute, and the bold, san serif type does just enough with those rounded terminals to be unique.

Sh*tty

Not good. An unimaginative name, ugly choices in typeface, and a haphazard illustrative logo. Is that sun rising in front of the fence?

I will say this much about it... the bunny’s tail is probably one of the best uses of a registration mark I’ve ever seen in a logo. Good for them.

Red Wings and Hurricanes

I’m not a fan of hockey, and there’s already a great site about sports uniforms, but after seeing today’s Sh*tty example on the subway the other night, I felt compelled to show it here.

Pr*tty

A plain red shirt, a few white stripes, and a beautiful (and classic) illustrated logo. At least Detroit has this going for it.

Sh*tty

Clearly a case of everything but the kitchen sink: a badly drawn, hockey puck hurricane logo; secondary logos on the shoulders; multiple stripes (the gray ones are actually a cheap metallic silver fabric!); and a hurricane warning flag pattern along the bottom, just in case you missed that they’re called the Hurricanes. Maybe they should add a boarded-up-window motif for next season.

Halls and Nyquil

Pr*tty

These ads are incredibly awesome. The photography is shot, modeled, styled, and photoshopped brilliantly. The writing is amusing. And the candy-like Halls typography is utterly sublime. I’m dying to know who designed these ads!

Sh*tty

All in all, this isn’t so sh*tty, really. It’s pretty damn boring is all. But the biggest difference between this and the Halls ads is the photography, and Nyquil blows it by going with something a little too real to be truly compelling. If I wanted to see a fat bearded guy with clogged pores, I’d look in the mirror, thank you very much.

Bonus Pr*tty

A little close up of that Halls type, with the actual Halls as punctuation. Damn it’s good.

This blog is not an island (or at least it shouldn't be)

Yesterday I noticed a comment on Monday’s post, that initially had me a bit irritated. The comment reads “C’mon, I know you can do better.” Nothing like a little vague criticism to get one’s ire up. After all, I work really hard on this blog, and yes, maybe some posts are better than others, but I do my best.

Anyway, after my ire went down, I thought, “Ok, fine. How do I make it better?”

So I’m asking you, dear readers, how can I make this blog better? What would make it more enjoyable, more informative, more challenging, more whatever it is you want and expect from it?

From my perspective, I’ve always hoped that it wouldn’t just be me contributing. That may sound lazy, but really it has more to do with expanding the scope and reach of the design work I feature here. The largest limitation to this blog is that my life only reaches so far. If I don’t see it on TV, or the web, or during my daily commute, it won’t end up on this blog. Frankly I’m surprised I’ve managed to generate nearly 100 posts, published every weekday without fail since the blog’s inception, featuring content largely collected by myself.

To those of you that have contributed, Thank you! Please keep it up. And to those of you that wish you were seeing different or more work here, please send it my way. The contact link is in the sidebar, and I always credit the contributors.

Otherwise, leave me some comments. Let me know what you think. This blog is all about opinions, so why not share yours?

Ten Point Scale: nighttime talk show logos

Today I’m premiering a new feature: the Ten Point Scale, wherein I rank the designs of a given category from Pr*ttiest (10) to Sh*ttiest (1).

Today’s scale: the logos of nighttime talk shows.

10. Larry King Live

Believe me, I’m shocked by this, too. But the straightforward bold-condensed type is very handsome, even if it’s slightly 3D-ized. If this were his old microphone logo, I guarantee it would be at the sh*tty end of the scale.

9. The Late Show with David Letterman

This could be drawn better (that T feels fat), but Letterman capitalizes nicely on his name with the collegiatey text, and otherwise doesn’t attempt too many acrobatics with the type.

8. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

The winning logo in Fallon’s fan vote, as designed by Number 17. Some will likely want this to be higher in the rankings, but this falls into the trap that most talk show logos seem to fall into: multiple lines of slightly offset type. What the heck is wrong with left-justified people? Here it’s not so bad, but I still can’t help but feel that the words need to be the same length (or noticeably increasing in size) in order to really pull this off.

7. Chelsea Lately

So close to being really quite great. But those overlapping letters are just clumsy. Either open the tracking, or make some ligatures for goodness sake.

6. The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien

Not bad, not bad. It should really look worse given my list of grievances: multiple lines of offset type; a nice-looking but randomly placed moon; the T’s in Tonight have longer outside strokes (huh?); “with Conan O’Brien” isn’t properly justified with the type above; and that apostrophe is wrong (!). But somehow it’s still pretty ok.

5. Jimmy Kimmel Live

Recently updated to a boxy san serif, this falls right in that perfectly acceptable, but not all that interesting range. Oddly enough, his previous logo couldn’t be more different, and yet it falls in that exact range, too.

4. The Jay Leno Show

I’ll admit, I really don’t like Jay Leno, and that may be influencing my ranking. But there’s simple (which you know I love), and then there’s boring. And this is the latter.

3. The Late Late Show

Another new logo I think.

Now they’re really starting to get sh*tty. Oof.

2. Spectacle Elvis Costello with...

Elvis, I love you dearly, but this is a train wreck! Spectacle is a clever name, but then they screw it up by actually ending the name of the show with “with...”. Pile on some bad typography, and an incredibly forced S-shaped glasses logo mark, and you have to wonder how it isn’t a 1 on this scale.

1. Charlie Rose

But alas, that honor falls to another man I love dearly. Do I really need to explain what’s wrong with this?

Honorable Mentions:

The Henry Rollins Show: I give it an 8.5.

Lopez Tonight: Fun, but not quite right. 7.5.

Dishonorable Mentions:

Last Call with Carson Daly: 2.5

Tavis Smiley: 0.5