- June 10th, 2016, 8:58 pm
#510904
I think I've had enough time to look at it and process it to be able to critique things in a way that isn't mean spirited. If I cross that line, I apologize.
This seal reeks of decision makers influencing the design in ways that negatively influenced it. They were out of their sphere of knowledge and insisted on things that make the design look cheap and/or unrefined. This is not the fault of the designers. If we had access to their rough drafts and other concepts, I can almost guarantee there would be something that looks incredible that we'd all be proud of.
What happens in situations like this is the leadership has a few ideas they'd like incorporated into the design. The designer then picks out a few of those ideas and develops concepts based around pieces of what the leadership desired. Once presented with the concepts, the leadership insists that they'd like all of their ideas incorporated into the design and that they weren't ideas but rather specific directives.
Because of this, we're left with a university seal that is extremely busy. We put things on there that represent the school but instead of developing an overall look and feel that represented the school as a whole, we included nine (9!!!) minor items into the seal. That's way too much and it cheapens the look.
Personal example of high-level leaders lacking design skills: I developed a logo for a doctor who was opening a new practice. His original brief asked for a family, mountains, and a Jesus fish all along with the name of the practice. I knew this would look horrible but developed a concept for him to see. Along with that, I also created other concepts so he'd know what I thought would best represent his vision. Luckily for him (and my portfolio), he listened to me (the design professional). He trusted I knew how to do my job better than he did.
In the case of this seal, our leadership felt they were better designers than the designers they hired to do the project. Because of that, we're left with a seal that includes a tower that looks like a penis erecting out of the Bible and flames that look like, well, you get the idea replaces nostalgic and bad with just bad.