Style and NFL Logos

With the Super Bowl coming up, this might be a good time to look at the brand mark that each team produces for its brand identity.

In general, most teams try to create a brand mark that looks tough, aggressive, and other adjectives we might associate with football or contact sports in general.

However, a slight change in the style of the brand mark can give it a completely different meaning. Consider the NFL brand marks as revised by David Rappoccio if designed from a hipster perspective.

In what other ways might you revise NFL (or any) brand mark? How does Rappoccio's revisions make the brand marks unsuitable for their intended purpose (or do any of them seem better)?

You can see all the logos here:

What if the NFL Logos Were Hipsters?

Rickrolling the Teacher

You may have heard of the Internet meme called "Rickrolling," which is surprising an audience with the music video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." The surprise comes when the audience thinks they author is sending them to one site, but instead sends them to the video.

(For the Wikipedia article on "Rickrolling," go here.)

If you just clicked on the link above, you've seen what I mean.

The actual Wikipedia article is here.

Ok, it's actually here.

Recently, a student "rickrolled" his physics professor by starting the first word of each line of his paper with one of the lyrics from the song. This is an interesting way to remediate new media back into old media, taking an online meme and putting it offline in a printed document. This rickrolling also required the student to think about layout, whether or not he consciously understood his design choices this way at the time.

Click below the full article from io9.com (for real this time).

Student Rickrolls His Teacher in this Ingenious Quantum Physics Essay

A New Take on Calvin Klein Ads

You've probably seen Calvin Klein ads with chiseled, male models trying to sell their clothes, perfume, and other goods. As appeals go (covered in Ch. 2), these obviously fall under sex appeal.

The tumblr blog linked below depicts a mock CK ONE ad campaign by inserting the comedian Louis CK as the "model."

LOUIS CK ONE

While humorous, we can ask questions about how ethos changes when Louis CK is the model rather than what we would typically expect. How does the audience change? How does the brand perception change? As an activity, you might create you own mock ads with other celebrities or personas and see how an audience reacts when viewing them.

Infographics Lie?

We often take the truthfulness of infographics for granted, but they can often visually skew data and misrepresent facts for rhetorical purposes.

This excellent article by Randy Olson discusses the different ways infographics are often manipulated to skew the reader's perception. The main 3 methods include:

1. Using visual cues such as color or shape to make a part of the design stand out that numerically might not be noticeable.

2. Using unreliable or biased data sources upon which the visual is based.

3. Excluding, transforming, or manipulating the data itself to create a narrower picture.

Check out the full article here:

Infographics Lie. Here's How To Spot The B.S.