While on vacation this past month I missed several episodes of my favorite television news program, CBS News Sunday Morning. The February 26th episode had a very interesting graphics-related segment, entitled "Identity Crisis," in which reporter Russ Mitchell took viewers through the process of designing a logo for the show's "The Money Issue" feature.CBS News Sunday Morning asked identity industry giant C&G Partners, creators of many immediately recognizable logos, to demonstrate the identity design process - in the admittedly ridiculous timeframe of three days. The piece - with great input from New York Times Book Review art director, author and School of Visual Arts Co-Chair Steven Heller (who was kind enough to contribute to my own book) - was a fairly decent video exhibition of a design firm at work. You can view the show segment here. The clip is also available for download from the C&G Partners web page, which further explains the project and answers questions received since the airing of the show.
The results of the major "design by committee" process, with about 16,000 people voting, may be seen on the CBS Sunday Morning web site. (A high-resolution viewing of the "Identity Crisis" segment is also available on the site.) Like the designers on the project, and the voting general public, I would have selected the image chosen from the limited options presented. Still, I don't know if the end result truly best serves the needs of the client - and I think the project conveys some of the limits (and dangers) of a three-day design process and a selection committee of thousands.
Photo: CBS News Sunday Morning
© 2006 Jeff Fisher LogoMotives
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