Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Brand Newish: Louisville Ladders

Continuing a week of low-profile, possibly very old rebrandings:

Old:

New:

I don’t know when this rebranding happened. It’s possibly very old. Ladders don’t spoil, after all, and you see them at use every day throughout the city, so I just happened to find these two about a year apart.

The old logo has a perfectly serviceable bold italic serif thing going on. But the script L is a bit clumsy and mismatched. Also, it seems redundant to use the ladder icon, and the words “LADDER”. Just pick one.

All that said, the new logo is probably more flawed. The logotype feels pretty fresh, and more high-tech, which isn’t such a bad thing, but what’s with the undulating cap height? Then there’s the forgettable, virtually meaningless arrow-shaped logomark to puzzle on. And just for good measure, it feels a little too crammed into that holding shape.

I’m tempted to say it went from meh, to meh-er. Tell me what you think.

2 comments:

  1. You're right, they're both meh, but the old one at least has some retro schwing to it. The new one is just BO-ring. No character (good or bad) - looks like it was done with clip art, or worse, crowdsourced.

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  2. The old one made it clear what it was for, if excessively so. I look at the new one and wonder if it is for the city of Louisville. There is nothing there to explain what the logo is selling. While one could argue that the "arrows" are supposed to be the ladders, all it looks like are arrows.

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