What We See and What They See

Hello to the readers! I want to start myself off here with a late introduction. I didn’t say who I was in my first blog post. My name is Johnathan LeBlanc, and I am a student Graphic Designer studying at St. Lawrence College. I’m thinking of going to Sheridan College after I graduate to take game design, but that is just an idea right now.

Well then, to the blog! I’m going to share with you an interesting post from the Logo Design Love blog that I shared in my last (first) post. The post is called “Desigual, butchered“, by Eric on January 6, 2014. I’m also going to talk about a couple of opinions that other people shared about the post.

So, in the post it talks about designing a logo for something, but that “No amount of refinement at the design stage can stop a blundering shopkeep from doing this to your logo.” These images were shown along with that quote:

Now obviously there is a problem here. Can you see it? The original logo for Desigual is very different than what is placed above the store entrance. This is representing the store and it looks like a mess.

Richard Knobbs commented on this and made a good point about how us Graphic Designers see things differently than non-Graphic Designers. This is part of his comment, and is really the heart of it:

“…misuse of a brand identity can cheapen a brand, but unless clients are told they might not realize it. If it were common sense, brand identity professionals wouldn’t get much work.” (commented Jan 7th, 2014)

I agree with what Richard says. Before I started taking graphic design, there were a ton of design elements that I wouldn’t have thought of. Grid, font use, colour selection, etc. There are still plenty of things that I’m learning now, and have yet to learn. I discussed an idea with some of my friends, that it is mainly Graphic Designers who see what works in a design. So the case with Desigual is probably that whomever put up the letters didn’t think of how it would turn out.

Another commenter, Rich, has a bit of a different opinion saying that anyone can define a good design from a bad one. Here are his words:

“The average person can still judge the standard of a brand without being able to articulate the reason for their opinion. It may take a designer to technically deconstruct the ‘why’, but a perfectly executed design will cease to appear constructed all together and become a single entity.” (commented Jan 6th, 2014)

I agree with this statement. I especially liked the part saying that it takes a designer to know why something is effective. I am 99% sure that the average person viewing “Desigual” will see that something is off whether they know why or not. They just haven’t learned to read designs the way a graphic designer would.

Well thats all I’m going to say for this blog post, but I want to get other people’s opinions on this. What do you think about how Graphic Designers see a design vs. how the average person sees it? Comment what you think!

’til next time, John.