c/branding-breakdowns

Why does nobody talk about overstyled logos in healthcare

I was sitting in a doctor's waiting room last week and noticed their logo had like 4 different fonts and a gradient that looked like a sunset. It made the clinic feel more like a cheap car dealership than a place I'd trust with my health. Does anyone else think medical brands should stick to simpler, cleaner looks instead of trying to be trendy?

That one critique about my logo kerning still stings 6 months later

I posted a logo I designed for a friend's BBQ joint in the subreddit and some guy said the spacing between the 'B' and 'Q' looked like a drunk guy's teeth. At first I was mad but then I stared at it and yeah, he was totally right. I tightened the kerning by 2 points and now the whole thing reads way cleaner. Has anyone else had a random comment totally wreck how you see your own work?

Am I the only one who thinks the new Taco Bell logo looks like a knockoff from a gas station taco joint?

I was driving through Phoenix last Friday and saw the updated logo on a sign and it just felt off, like they flattened the whole thing and lost the punchy energy, but then my buddy said it looks cleaner and more modern, so which side are you on does it work or did they break it?

Coffee shop in Portland has the worst sign I've ever seen

I was chatting with the barista about why the font is so tiny on their new menu board and she said, well the owner designed it himself. Has anyone else found that one person with zero design sense can ruin an entire brand look overnight?

Spent 3 years overcomplicating my logo grids before a mentor pointed it out

I was sitting in a Starbucks in Santa Monica last Tuesday showing this guy my portfolio and he asked why I had 17 anchor points on a circle. Turns out I was adding unnecessary curves trying to make things look 'organic' when simple shapes read way better at small sizes. Anyone else realize late that you're just doing extra work for no reason?

Picked a serif font for a client's app logo against my gut feeling

I was torn between a clean sans-serif and a bold serif for a coffee shop's ordering app. Went with the serif because the owner insisted it felt more 'artisan' and honestly? It makes the name pop way better on mobile than I expected. Anyone else had a type choice surprise them like that?

Just saw a brand new coffee shop logo that's COMPLETELY unreadable

Was downtown Portland yesterday getting lunch and walked past a place called "Brew Haven" that just opened. Their sign has this super thin cursive font in light gray on a white background - I had to squint from 10 feet away to barely make out the name. For a brick and mortar shop spending thousands on signage, how does nobody catch that your storefront needs to be readable from across the street? Has anyone else seen a local business mess up their logo like this recently?

That Pepsi logo redesign taught me a lesson about overthinking

Last Wednesday I spent 3 hours staring at my own brand logo for my landscaping company, trying to tweak the font size by like 2 pixels. Then I remembered how Pepsi supposedly paid a million bucks for that wavy logo change back in 2008 and nobody even cared. It made me realize I was wasting time on tiny details that customers will never notice. Has anyone else caught themselves over-polishing a logo design that was probably fine already?

My buddy the sign painter pointed out something about my logo

I was at a barbecue last Saturday and my friend Mike, who does hand-painted signs for a living, looked at my company's logo on my truck. He said the font I picked looks like every other concrete company in a 50 mile radius and asked why I was trying to blend in instead of stand out. It hit me hard because I spent $400 on that logo design and thought it was fine. Now I'm wondering if I should look into a custom wordmark or something that actually says what we do different. Any of you guys rebrand after someone called you out like that?

Update: That $50 logo critique I paid for on Fiverr took 4 days to get back and it was just a list of font names I already tried

I wasted a whole afternoon cross-referencing his suggestions with my brand guidelines before I realized the guy probably never even looked at my industry, so has anyone else gotten a branding review that was basically useless?

A burger joint near me changed their font and I almost drove past it

I've been going to this place called Patty's for like 6 years. Last Tuesday I drove by three times before I realized it was the same spot because they swapped their old chunky red lettering for this skinny gray cursive font. The new logo blended right into their brick wall and the sign was half the size it used to be. I asked the owner what happened and he said a designer friend did it for free, but now he's losing customers. Has anyone else had a local spot mess up their branding and tank their walk-ins?

Rant: That time a local diner swapped their logo and lost all their regulars in 3 weeks

I walked into Mike's Grill downtown last month and barely recognized the place. They went from this warm, hand-drawn fork logo they'd had since 1992 to this cold, generic sans-serif wordmark. The owner said a branding agency charged them $2,000 for the redesign, promising it would look more modern. Three weeks later, I heard four regulars at the counter say they felt like it was a different restaurant now. The new logo just sits there flat on the menu, no personality, no story. Has anyone else seen a local place tank their vibe with a rebrand that ignored what made them feel familiar?

Unpopular opinion: that 'vintage' diner logo trend needs to die already

Last week I walked into a new burger spot in Denver and their logo looked like it was photocopied from 1952 - same chunky font, same faded red and teal. Three years ago I thought this retro look was charming but now every coffee shop and taco joint uses the exact same formula. Am I the only one tired of brands pretending they've been around since the 50s when they opened in 2022?

Finally fixed my kerning after 7 years of guessing - not what I expected

I kept getting told my logos looked amateur and it drove me crazy. Turns out I had a bad habit of manually adjusting letter spacing by eye instead of using optical alignment settings - took me 7 years to realize that was the problem. Has anyone else had a tiny tweak like that completely change their work?

The old Pizza Hut logo made me stop and think the other day

I drove past a small town Pizza Hut last weekend and it still has the red roof logo from the 90s. Most of them switched to that flat modern wordmark years ago, but this one kept the original style. It felt weirdly honest, like a place that didn't feel the need to rebrand just to look fresh. Does anyone else get thrown off when a chain changes its logo and suddenly the whole place feels different?

Shoutout to the day I stopped cramming every detail into a logo

I used to think a good logo needed to show everything the business did, like a bakery logo with a rolling pin, wheat, and a croissant all smashed together. Then last month a friend who runs a design shop in Portland showed me their single-line cactus logo for a coffee roaster and it clicked. Anyone else have that moment where you realized less is actually more in branding?

Overheard someone say 'the swoosh is lazy' about a local gym logo and now I can't unsee it

Warning: That customer in St. Louis taught me a hard lesson about logo contrast

I was showing off a logo I designed for a small bakery to a guy at a coffee shop near the arch. He leaned in, squinted, and said 'can you even read that from here?' I brushed it off at first, thinking he just didn't get the style. But then he pulled out his phone and looked at it on the screen in bright sunlight. He said 'looks like a gray blob to me.' That hit me hard because I had spent 3 weeks on the colors and thought they were perfect. Turns out the pale yellow on white I used was almost invisible in normal lighting. I went back and adjusted the whole palette to have way more contrast. Has anyone else had a random stranger point out a glaring brand mistake you missed?

My dad told me our old family diner's logo looked like a clip art mess from 1998, and suddenly I couldn't unsee how much fast food branding has changed since then.

He pointed out the drop shadow on the text and the jagged edges on the burger in the sign, and it hit me how even cheap designs from 20 years ago feel totally outdated now - has anyone else had a relative totally roast a vintage logo and make you rethink the whole era of branding?

Found out movie theater logos used to have secret meanings hidden in them

I was killing time before a showing last month at the old AMC on 14th street and started staring at their logo on the big screen. Got curious and looked up the history of theater logos on my phone. Turns out the old Regal logo from the 90s had a hidden crown shape in the negative space between the letters. Blew my mind because I saw that logo a thousand times as a kid and never noticed. Also found out that the original Cinemark logo had a film reel and popcorn hidden in the star shape. I spent the whole previews scrolling through logo history articles instead of watching the trailers. Has anyone else stumbled on hidden branding tricks in old company logos that they just never saw before?

Warning: my new logo looked great on screen but the print shop called it a disaster

Spent $800 on a sleek minimalist logo with thin lines and tiny text, then watched it turn into an illegible blob on business cards last week, has anyone else been burned by a design that didn't think about small scale reproduction?

Spotted a branding fail at a coffee shop in Nashville last month

I was waiting for my pour over at this hip spot and noticed their logo was this tiny, thin line drawing on a mustard yellow wall. You could barely see it from 10 feet away. I asked the barista about it and she said customers walk in and miss the name all the time. She pointed out they spent $3,000 on that design. Has anyone else run into a logo that just disappears into its background?

Stop putting QR codes on your logo, nobody wants to scan it

I was walking through the mall last week and saw a storefront where the brand name was half covered by a giant QR code. Every single person just walked past it. If your logo needs a square that leads to your website, you already lost trust. Does anyone else think these things look desperate and clutter up good design?

Caught myself using a logo mark that looked totally different on a phone screen

I was sitting in my truck last Tuesday checking a new brand mockup on my phone and the logo looked like a completely different shape... the thin lines just vanished against a dark background. Turns out I'd only been viewing it on my big monitor at work without scaling it down to actual mobile size. Anybody else had a logo fail that only showed up when you checked it on a real device?

That rebrand of the moving company near me was a disaster

Last week I drove past a truck from 'Swift Haul' and the new logo looks like a squashed ant. The old one had simple bold letters, now it's all swoopy lines nobody can read. Anyone else see local businesses ruin their look for no reason?