CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF LIPPINCOTT & MALGULIES AND AUTHOR OF “IMAGE BY DESIGN”
My initial project was to present logo design, and specially American logo design, as a creative form, acknowledge the designers (if there is a way to retrace who designed what) and give some indication about the design process.
First of all, we are a 45 year old company, so we had a lot of designers come and go, some of them even died, but in any event Lippincott & Margulies would be identified as the designer, simply because it would be impossible to assign credit for a particular logo to a single individual designer, physically impossible. In addition, because of the way we work, while the inspiration for a particular logo may have come from an individual, there is a process involved. We have a team of designers working on all our designs and while one person may have the directional inspiration, two others may have contributed something, shape a little bit more or add this or take away that, so I would say that in all instances Lippincott & Margulies should be described as the designer because it is both factual and even if it were not it would not be practical to find out who actually did it.
Let me ask you a specific question about the Coca Cola logo which can be traced back to Frank M. Robinson’s ledgers …
Now every logo is redesigned over the years, in some cases in very obvious ways but with Coca Cola the changes have been much more subtle.
Extremely so. In truth if you take the subject of brand Coca Cola, it has more than one logo. It has a logotype for the brand name Coca Cola which is a Spenserian script and as been that way for ever but we tinkered with it 20 years ago, 2-3 years ago another firm tinkered with it, but you are correct when you say that the modifications were very very minor. In addition, you have a logotype for the word Coke, which was originally in a typeface but now includes intertwined, and we didn’t do it, the swirl or the wave which we created as the third logo. In addition they are many who would say that the color red is as much a part of the Coca Cola logo as anything else.
You’ll be interested to know that on the swirl, the inspiration was the original 6 1/2 oz. returnable bottle that was so famous. All we did was turn it on its side and it gives you the silhouette. That’s the inspiration of it. Obviously it is grossly exaggerated and refined and made much more elegant, but that’s how we got there.
So it is very difficult in the case of Coca Cola to say “The Logo” because there are so many elements that comprise the identifier of the brand.
I think the identifier is a much more useful word because the identifier is made up of a logo (type), sometimes a symbol (the wave) and sometime a particular color scheme or combination of colors as in the case of Coca Cola.
Yet the visual appeal still relies in part on the original design. Would you agree that logo design is a combination of good business sense and artistry ? A typical American “art form” so to speak …
I think it is, I think it is. We can say “art form”, … let me qualify it somewhat. Its purpose is not an art form, it purpose is purely commercial, whether it be to raise the awareness level of audiences or simply to identify the brand, to shape the image, its purpose is commercial. It has become an art form by virtue of the ubiquitousness of these expressions.
In the context of what we are taking about, when Renoir painted a still life it was a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers, when Andy Warhol painted a still life it was a can of Campbell soup (which we happened to designed). You see the point that I am making? These art forms have become such a fabric of what we see and feel around us that it is part of our life and they have become art forms even though it was not their purpose. But them again an apple was invented to eat (laugh) but it became something else from painting.
So if it meets the definition of an art form with those qualifications then indeed it’s an art form, but that was never, never its original purpose.
Well, the fact that it is used as the base for the work of Andy Warhol, or for my photographs is one thing, but I think that the creative process that goes into the design of the logos, implies a certain amount of artistic talent.
No question about it. There is no question that the tools and inspiration used to create a painting are very similar to the tools and imagination and the creativity that is used to create a logo. Absolutely, I agree with you. The sole difference is that the purpose of the painting is to decorate or entertain or perhaps tell a story, the purpose of this creative exercise is never to entertain, never to decorate but really to fill a particular commercial mission. So it is only in the purpose that they differ, not in the skills.
Earlier you mentioned color. The red, white and blue scheme, for instance, is used commonly by oil companies and other companies as well.
Well, red, white and blue as a color combination, beside being patriotic (the American colors), almost guaranties the sign high visibility. The problem is that everybody knows that the most visual compelling combination of colors is red, white and blue, so if you asked me everybody would be red, white and blue and then, everybody would be shooting at the same level. We did the Chevron which is red, white and blue, Pepsi is red, white and blue. Its hard not to see a red, white and blue sign, you have to be blind …
Well, there may be different shades, but red, white and blue is a combination to attract the eye. It’s simply, simply unbeatable.
Mobil is another great red, white and blue sign, its great. That is marvelous, understated, sensational, simply sensational.
As for Amoco, where a gas station can be changed, it is being changed to a new design theme and a new logo. We had nothing to do with it, but you know what always struck me about this logo? To me a flame for a gas company is entirely inappropriate because it says we are polluting the air.
What are the implications in a change of a logo?
We’re working on Baskin Robbins now. It’s an exiting new logo. Management at Baskin Robbins has accepted the new logo, however there are thousand of outlets and most of them are owned by franchises, and the franchises have to spend the money to buy the new logo, the new sign, so the process takes years.
Some foreign logos are redesigned to conform to some rules of American advertising. The logo painted on the side of the Perrier delivery trucks for instance does not exist in France…
Well, we’ve always believed, and we designed a lot of them, that a truck is a moving billboard, so why not use it for its advertising value in addition to its transportation value.
Federal Express, that’s an excellent job. That’s excellent. I don’t know who did it, it’s first rate. It really does what it’s suppose to do. Nobody sat down to decorate when they did that, they wanted to make high visibility, “get us noticed and say that we’re fast”, and that’s what it does. The all thing works brilliantly.
Logo design is of much broader interest than just for the professionals in the field. Everybody is interested in image, everybody is interested in logo as an art form.
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