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Wednesday 25 November 2009

File this under "Who gives a fuck": another total wank from Wolff, Olins

Those of you who are connoisseurs of ugliness will know that a few million have been pissed away on the astoundingly ugly British Olympics logo, which is the visual equivalent of dog shit.

Now I see the corporate idiots who mismanage AOL (fondly known to those who have suffered from their service as Arseholes On Line) have found their design soul-mates by getting the same firm to design a new logo.

You can just see what masquerades as thinking behind this. Quite simply, some boardroom monkey got sold a bill of goods under the heading of "rebranding". CorporoTwats just love rebranding because it calls for so much less thought or effort than trying to produce a better service than their competitors. You just pay some wankers in ponytails to do a new design and - hey, all the punters are just bound to say - "Ah. AOL have a new logo. Let's all forget about the shit service they gave me and switch back to them." Right? Wrong.


This little piece of witless marketing masturbation was announced as follows. "To coincide with its de-coupling from Time Warner and its shares being offered on the NYSE, AOL is unveiling a new logo. Designed by Wolff Olins, the new ID re-imagines AOL as Aol.".

Re-imagines? Re-imagines? What utter bollocks. Anyhow, the period in "Aol." is part of the logo, not just to tell you that a sentence has ended; and the lower case letters "are designed to be viewed against a backdrop of different images."

Aol. says its new logo is "a simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images. It's one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal." To reveal what? Probably the vast, echoing vacuum that passes for strategy in their business.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us from such tripehounds.

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