Brandacadabra

When ugly is good

A couple of days ago, I came upon the new identity for the newly formed Symbian Foundation. My first reaction was similar to that of many other designers—which can be summed up to ‘illustrations are OK, but the logo is damn ugly‘. The critique went on to technical details (legibility at small sizes), appropriateness (’would you see that printed on the back of a Nokia phone?‘) and comments on the crappy typography. Further on, obvious resemblance with Juno movie titles and Microsoft’s Hey Genius program was mentioned, and solutions on how to make a better logo in five seconds were offered at no extra cost.

Now that’s what I call a strong reaction! Fortunately, they don’t have something to go back to, as Tropicana has recently done (something with which I don’t agree, but that’s a different story). And I think that a strong commitment is needed to resist such flak from the audience, in order to stay on the initial track (which Tropicana did not).

I hate the logo as aesthetics, but I love what it does, together with the supporting illustrations—it showcases the will to be something totally new. I can only guess the strategy behind it, but I assume that turning Symbian from a closed, corporate-owned operating system with countless incompatible flavors into a open-source, convergent OS takes a lot of guts and commitment. The identity is such a bold move, that I am afraid it won’t be supported enough by the organization, if the idea is just a creative solution from an agency.

It might also be not-so-different in the open-source community, where the most recognized icons are amateurishly drawn characters, as Michael Mace points out:

Nevertheless, it’s a welcome departure from glossy, 3D or hi-tech designs. The whole magic resides in the courage to go for a totally unexpected, different solution, to break free from past associations with a rigid, corporate-owned OS.