Over my 20+ years of creating visual identities, logos and branding systems, I’ve always taken the “high road” when it comes to being overly critical of fellow creatives. That said, within this new blog series, I intend to shine a light and call out identities that are poorly constructed, feature crap typography, do not seem to leverage any kind of conceptual thinking, and are just bad science.
Today, I saw a commercial for the branded wearable company, 4 Imprint. There is a lot to unpack here, not just that they are in the business of promoting brands primarily through a company logo, and this is what 4 Imprint comes to the table with?
No bueno.
Typographically, it appears like they have taken the antiquated typeface and further squashed the “imprint” type to be condensed (see distorted dots over i’s). Apparently, they determined the number 4 didn’t deserve the same punishment. Then, time traveled back to 1957 and borrowed the – 100% stylistically different – Newport Cigarette swoosh. Unlike the oval shaped dotted i’s, they opted to include a perfect circle to be a… dot or some sort representing some high ideal? An oversized period sitting above the baseline? A point to the exclamation swoosh? Dunnoh, but it saddens me.
