Visual Rhetoric

designtactics:

This wry look at the recent Starbucks redesign caught our eye this morning…

From Cameron Moll’s article “Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign”:

“Thus, the differences between Redesigners and Realigners might be summarized as follows: The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven.  One approach seeks merely to refresh, the other aims to fully reposition and may or may not include a full refresh.”

Frankly, I don’t believe that the image above is much of an exaggeration for design.  It seems like advertisements, logos, etc. are being made more and more simple.  Why is this?  Logos are supposed to communicate the personality and meaning of a brand, and I think that when companies redesign often and for no apparent reason, the power of a logo is lost.  

While it can be argued that the new Starbucks logo isn’t necessarily a redesign (because it is only an alteration of their previous logo), I would say that it fits within Moll’s definition of a redesign, because it seems like this was purely an aesthetic choice—did Starbucks really think that cutting out the words of their logo would help them adapt to their customers, or were they just paying attention to current design fads?  I’m guessing it was the latter.  If the new logo was in fact not a purpose-driven decision, then this is an example of redesigning rather than realigning.

“It’s perfectly fine to refresh the entire design from the ground up if there’s good reason to do so, and especially if it’s the cause and not merely the symptom of your site’s woes.” (Moll)

This last point is unrelated, but I wanted to include a quote I really liked from Negativland’s Tenets of Free Appropriation.

“The urge to make one thing out of other things is an entirely traditional, socially healthy, and artistically valid impulse which only has recently been criminalized in order to force private tolls on the practice (or prohibit it to escape embarrassment)….We believe that artistic freedom for all is more important to the health of society than the supplemental and extraneous incomes derived from private copyright tariffs which create a cultural climate of art control and Art Police.”

I think lots of creatives are already starting to ignore some of these rules and push the envelope to find out just how much they can get away with.  It also seems like the creators of original works are not always opposed to the reappropriation of their material—in fact, some of them want to be a part of the new media culture. Metric, one of my favorite bands, actually encouraged their fans to remix their songs for a contest.  This kind of news may be encouraging to people who are constantly frustrated by copyright, and it is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what kinds of projects can result from a more cooperative creative culture.