You Could Do Almost Anything Part 1
This is basically art and design critique by a pedant.<p><i>&quot;B-b-but their actions don&#x27;t match their words&quot;</i> is the most uninspired of all criticisms. A logo is successful if it generates results, not if it is consistent with whatever principles the critic determines a good logo should adhere to. &quot;You Could Do Almost Anything&quot; is basically the complaint of either unrecognized talent, or the untalented, against the institution for failing to recognize someone whose work follows all the rules, but lacks spirit.<p>That&#x27;s what this critique is -- a failure or refusal to see the spirit of the design, and insisting to measure it on a basis that only the author cares for. FFS, the guy drew a bookshelf so he could challenge the designer&#x27;s intent to portray books on a shelf. Does he think the designer didn&#x27;t know that a literal application of that principle would result in a broken shelf?<p>&gt; <i>One should note that there was a time during which HP intentionally made a reversible logo.</i><p>Should one note this?<p>This, for me, betrays the true roots of this critique -- unexamined appreciation for all things old, and refusal to recognize merit in new interpretations or to, even temporarily, suspend judgment. Essentially, he is holding their relative newness against them, and revering the old because he is already familiar with those rules. As if those older elements were not once new, and the designers were not also subject to similar critiques from their contemporaries, based almost solely on the fact that new things do not much resemble old things.<p>The author&#x27;s own logo fails many of the standards that he holds for these other logos. Apart from giving the impression of inconsistent widths, owing to chamfered interior corners: the &quot;S&quot; of ES would never be unambiguously scrutable, and this logo would always need to appear beside the author&#x27;s name in order to make sense.<p>However, despite the fact that his name needs to appear beside the logo, I cannot think of a more incongruous font to accompany that style than a modern sans serif font. The logo is done in the style of an 80s-90s sci-fi&#x2F;futuristic movie title, and the name is presented in a mid-century sans serif font. I wonder what the author would think of it if he saw it presented elsewhere.