Stab At Humor
Jalapeno Contact Lens
The Pickle Conspiracy
Design For Assholes

© 2000 Mike McCuen

So you want to design a logo for your new startup company? Have you already been given the task to re-design the logo for the company you work for? Are you apprehensive? Concerned about lacking the training of a graphic artist? Just can't draw?

Well, who gives a shit nowadays? Nobody. Apparently nobody, anyway. These days you see the same stupid logo on every fucking web page, magazine ad, and television commercial. The Swoosh. See it up there? Makes everyone look like a Red Dwarf spin-off, doesn't it?

Back in the old days (that's eight years ago) when I was doing graphic design the old fashioned way I would sit with clients and go over logo designs and concepts for days or even weeks. Back then a company's logo had to represent something about the company's character and identity. It had to express as much of this as possible in just a single icon. Getting your logo done was a BIG-DEALtm and once you had one, you were stuck with it for life (or until you could convince the shareholders that it needed "updating").

The modern company doesn't seem to want to express anything about themselves in the logo anymore. They apparently want to look just like every other fucking corp. I can't figure out if it's because the people running these idiot farms are just too stupid to grasp the concept of corporate identity, or if the latest group of "designers" are just barely conscious iMac owners with a copy of Illustrator.

So for what it's worth, here's the big secret to being a successful asshole logo-designer. Who knows, if this works for you it could lead to a successful career since once you have this design down, you'll never have to think about it again.



Set the name of the company in a san-serif font with a black or extra-bold weight. In this case I picked Futura extra-bold.



If you're feeling "creative" you can elect to add some "dynamic" qualities to the alleged logotype by changing into italics. Just claim that it's "forward looking" and corporate shit-heads will ejaculate over it.



Now add the company "tag-line" to the piece of shit. Don't leave out the trademark indicia or you won't be able to sue other people when they steal this truly original piece of design work.



Now here's the tricky part- using your drawing program you'll have to do a "Swoosh". This consists of either having it automatically do a circle, then caving it in with the bezier point editor, or by using one of the fucking ten-million of them in those cheap-ass $10.00 Clip-Art CDROM's at CompUsa.



That's it. Now go forth and charge $250.00 an hour for design time. You may not yet be an Asshole Designer, but you can now at least look like one. Hey- just look at the companies that fell for this shit! Now that you know, you'll see this "Swoosh" everywhere.


SCRIBBLINGS: Stuff we wrote down.