Logo: little black dress

[calebm12]

Hi folks.

Havent recruited this client yet, but had a brainstorm (or fart) over the weekend so was playing with a logo concept. Would like your thoughts and opinion. Have had a difficult time find a suitable font and how to display it. Thought of hanging the dress from it, etc. Any suggestions, critiques, etc would be, as always, appreciated.
The idea behind the group is a sophisticated but fun organiztion for women (kinda of a modern day counter to the red hat society)

Cheers

p.s. please take into consideration i am guy that hardly spend 30 mintues a year shopping for clothes so my dress might not be anatomically correct. :)

p.p.s make sure to zoom in on the image shack posting...otherwise the font looks really bad for some reason.

http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1552/dressap9.th.jpg (http://img228.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dressap9.jpg)

[D-Frag]

script and sans serif fonts only go well together in very weird ways, this is not one of them. I honestly don't know what direction to point you in. its unbalanced and im not a fan of the red and blacks. if its any consideration the logo with the text on the right side is more balanced but that script font is just horrid with a sans serif font (which by the way has way to much kerning in it, another reason why i think its throwing the balance off)

if your pitching them this logo its going to need an extensive over haul. i would even say just scrap it all and start over. i tend to snowball on logos, another words the first 10-20 are all crap, then it starts getting good.

[budafist]

I like the script font you have used, but it looks a little odd where there are double characters tt and ss. It's because we expect casual scripts like this to be less uniform I guess. Are there alternate letters?

The sans serif font looks like it has been stretched on the right version. Don't like it.

[frankster]

Is it these people you are trying to re-do the logo of? I'm confused.

http://thelittleblackdresssociety.com/

[budafist]

Weird.

The original is much better. Why do you think they need a redesign?

[garricks]

p.p.s make sure to zoom in on the image shack posting...otherwise the font looks really bad for some reason.
Doing this caused a window to open for "Cars Direct," ignoring my pop up blocker and then crashing my browser.

:mad:

buda, i agree, the original is much better.

PS: The typeface in the original is called Inspiration ROB, according to WhatTheFont. Me likz!

[calebm12]

yea...been struggling with the font. yalls comments are right on. this is not a replacement for the other logo. they are un-related groups...i dont even know if she knows there is a group with the same name.
however, the logo you are looking though very nice....is not a little black dress...its a gown. i would say there is a difference.
i guess i am back to the drawing board for fonts. and yes i agree its unbalanced, but that was part of the reason for me posting it...to get ideas on balancing it.

c

[garricks]

In that case, calebm, I think you're way too close to the other logo. And the fact that the other group is displaying a trademark is protecting their name. The "she" you refer to is asking for trouble.

This whole thing is a lawsuit waiting to happen. (I'm my company's graphic-designer-who-talks-to-the-Legal-department guy.)

[calebm12]

thanks for that response. i was thinking she might run into a snag. however, hate to break it too her.
However, question....how can my logo be in legal trouble when there is not even a single shared graphic element. the fact that there are two dresses on a logo in my mind does not constitute logo infrignement. That is like saying no other burger joint can use the face of a little girl in a logo.

[garricks]

Compare the two side by side

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a249/garricks/BBU%20avatars/LBD_compare.jpg

The colors, the placement of the design elements... I feel my Legal department would tell me that there's enough similarity here to cause confusion between the two organizations. Way too close.

If my Trademarks guy is free for lunch tomorrow, I'll ask him what he thinks. Just for S&G...

(Mods, I hope this doesn't violate forum posting guidelines...please nuke it if it does...)

[budafist]

If it is trademarked you can't even have it similar to the existing logo. They own it.

Ask yourself this: could people possibly mistake your logo for the existing logo. The answer is yes.

A gown is a dress. A dress might not be a gown though.

[icekitty37]

i like the one on the left better but i'm not crazy about the "tail" on the dress or the spacing in the SOCIETY. I am a fan of the font used for the rest though. seems very appropriate

[Tdubya86]

You're trying to convince us that your logo is THAT similar just by pure chance? Either your client directed you to this solution after seeing the original, you've seen it and just forgot, or you are well aware that it's the same and thought you had changed enough to get away with it. I don't buy that you just happened to have a dress ona red hangar, to the left of a black script font with red sans serif underneath. nope.

[Optimusdinkus]

aaahhhh intellectual property laws. Im guessing a client being silly is at fault really. I love it when for example, a mechanic gets his staff to put in a wrong part, do you shoot the staff member or the mechanic? in law they shoot the mechanic. But anyways, there has got to be other solutions idea wise for this. I mean why just a black dress and not a red one? what's the purpose of it being black? (I mean black underwear on ladys has some significance doesnt it? :confused:

[Danger_Mouse]

You're trying to convince us that your logo is THAT similar just by pure chance? Either your client directed you to this solution after seeing the original, you've seen it and just forgot, or you are well aware that it's the same and thought you had changed enough to get away with it. I don't buy that you just happened to have a dress ona red hangar, to the left of a black script font with red sans serif underneath. nope.

I gotta agree.

[double A-ron]

You're trying to convince us that your logo is THAT similar just by pure chance? Either your client directed you to this solution after seeing the original, you've seen it and just forgot, or you are well aware that it's the same and thought you had changed enough to get away with it. I don't buy that you just happened to have a dress ona red hangar, to the left of a black script font with red sans serif underneath. nope.

I gotta agree.

I'm inclined to agree as well.

[budafist]

Havent recruited this client yet, but had a brainstorm (or fart) over the weekend so was playing with a logo concept.

This still strikes me as a very strange situation. The client hasn't come to you for design or advice, but you have reworked their logo based on a idea that came to over the weekend? What idea was that? To rehash someone's logo and try and get them to buy it off you?

[garricks]

i like the one on the left better but i'm not crazy about the "tail" on the dress or the spacing in the SOCIETY. I am a fan of the font used for the rest though. seems very appropriate
icekitty, go back to the original post and read it again, clicking on the links. What I posted is different from what you're thinking.

[bigmedia]

You could get boned big time here, I'd tell your client asap.

If you find some way to use that dress though, I'd slim it down a bit, she has rather big breasts ;)

[budafist]

You could get boned big time here, I'd tell your client asap.

If you find some way to use that dress though, I'd slim it down a bit, she has rather big breasts ;)

There is no client. They are redesigning the client's logo without consent. Client and designer have yet to meet.

[CkretAjint]

...she has rather big breasts ;)

I don't think it's only the breats that are large. I would say the entire figure is frumpy looking...

[budafist]

Maybe that was to encourage larger women into the society. There's not that many clubs that target generously proportioned ladies :)

[bigmedia]

The way I understood it was someone had approached him about doing a logo for "the little black dress society", and though the deal was not yet done, the guy had started work on some ideas, and then realised there was a completely seperate organisation with the same name and logo... mmmmmmm?

[calebm12]

bigmedia...correct.
i have no intentions of cheating anyone or ripping any out of there work as previously hinted at in past posts

[bigmedia]

It's still seems a bit fishy that your design came about completely by accident though and just happened to be almost identical to that of another organisation of the same name :S

[budafist]

Even if it came about by accident. You cannot use your design because there is an existing one that is trademarked.

I'm not even sure if your client can use that name.

That is like saying no other burger joint can use the face of a little girl in a logo.
It's like saying you can't open up a new burger joint called McDonald's or McD's even one that is spelled differently to McDonald's. It means that you can't use a yellow M or golden arches either.

What's the situation at the moment with your client?

[CkretAjint]

It's like saying you can't open up a new burger joint called McDonald's or McD's even one that is spelled differently to McDonald's. It means that you can't use a yellow M or golden arches either.

LOL... I so just thought of Eddy Murphy working at McDoogles in "Coming to America' :D

[budafist]

The name Burger King is was already registered by 1 shop in Australia when the American company sought to expand there. If it can happen to a giant corporation like Burger King, it can happen to your client.

I am surprised Burger King didn't just buy the that food shop in Queensland out.

When Burger King decided to expand its operations into Australia, it found that its business name was already trademarked by a man running a small takeaway food shop in Queensland. Thus, BK was forced to change the name when it decided to open stores in the country - the only time this has happened in its corporate history. Burger King provided the Australian franchisee, Jack Cowin, with a list of possible alternative names that the Australian Burger King restaurants could be branded as. The names were derived from pre-existing trademarks already registered by Burger King and its then corporate parent Pillsbury. Cowin selected the "Hungry Jack" brand name, one of Pillsbury's US pancake mixture products, and slightly changing the name to a possessive form by adding an apostrophe 's' thus forming the new name Hungry Jack's. Accordingly, the first Australian franchise of the Burger King Corporation, established in Perth in 1971, was branded as Hungry Jack's.[3]

[calebm12]

The client scrapped my logo "idea" and doesnt like the concept of her competitor either. she (lawyer) says there is no problem with the name, that you cant Trade Mark a society...that there isnt anything to trademark....she said it is like Miller Lite tran marking lite beer...you cant do it. She has registered the name with the state of fl, and can find no record of any registration nation wide for the other group.
she has hand drawn a dress...doesnt look good...and she wants me to trace it and use that. fine by me.
I would argue the legality behind similar looking logos. The evaluation of similarty is relative.
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-23615165.htm
http://www.creativelatitude.com/logo_notions/logo_notions_1105.html - section on how similar is too similar

[frankster]

You need to be very careful what information you give out on a public forum. It would be a piece of cake to find when the Florida fictitious name registration was filed and who by, with a full name and address for your "anonymous" client (about a minute on the internet actually). If the owners of the other "little black dress society" (Charitable organisation set up off the back of Author Amanda Graybill's book "the little black dress", I think likely designed by husband and wife team 1310 Studios) choose to google the name, this forum post will pop right up soon as it's spidered and they may well come knocking at your door regardless of how dissimilar you personally deam your creations to be and they will be armed with your post stating that your client knows full well what she's doing. Hopefully, being a lawyer herself, she does know what she's doing (but remember, her field is probate and trust law, not intellectual property law)

[Virgo Nightingale]

The evaluation of similarty is relative.
Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, sure. But do you or this society really want to take that chance? Honestly, the logos are way too similar to not consider the possibility of legal action, and frankly I think any court of law would find them too similar as well.

[PrintDriver]

Maybe the author of the book will sue them both. :D

[calebm12]

you are correct. i refrain from futher discussion on this in any specific way. there are acutally two little black dress organizations. so they arent alone.

[calebm12]

She has scraped the logo or any close representation of it. I think she is mostly interested in having wine with her friends. :)

[budafist]

Maybe she can have it "Having a Whinge and a Wine Society" then :)

[Optimusdinkus]

or "The ez whinas!" (feminine plural ftw)

[Optimusdinkus]

Can people who have actually had it happened to them post their experiance? I hate this bullshit of speculative theory that people have nothing better to do on their time than slam down the doors of graphic designers who design for sole propriators who are the responsibility of their own accord (granted it happens to THEM, but not to us so often, at least I havent really talked to anyone who had a REAL personal encounter, not something they "heard" like the rest of us).

If its for yourself and your identity and your buisness, then your hosed. If it was for someone else, they are hosed.

[Tdubya86]

It's not about whether or not you're going to get caught stealing, Optimusdinkus. As designers, we have an ethical obligation to avoid creating things that are too much like other things. It's one thing to get inspired by someone elses work, but to use virtually the same colors, layout, and typography is inexcusable.

[morea]

Havent recruited this client yet, but had a brainstorm (or fart) over the weekend so was playing with a logo concept.

Aside from the obvious and already stated problems with this logo, this is really not a good way to do business.

First of all, how would you contact the client? "Hey, I noticed that you (don't have a logo / have a logo that sucks) and I wanted to offer my design services. Here's what I came up with. What will you pay me for it?"

That's dangerously like spec work. If you show your idea to a client who is not under contract with you, she is under no obligation to pay you for it. If she decides that she likes the idea she can always have someone with some software skills execute the concept and she doesn't have to pay you anything for it.

Additionally, a logo is supposed to represent the essence of a business: everything they are and everything that they stand for in one simple mark. If you don't know anything about the company/group, their values, their goals, etc., you are not ready to design a logo for them. Logo design is really a lot more complicated than just putting a symbol next to the company name.

That's not even to mention the fact that this mark has SO much in common with the existing one... if I could make one recommendation to you it would be that you review your business practices. You might want to check out the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook on Pricing and Ethical Guidelines. You can get a copy from gag.org, or you can usually get one cheap on eBay.

[Lithonate]

You're trying to convince us that your logo is THAT similar just by pure chance? Either your client directed you to this solution after seeing the original, you've seen it and just forgot, or you are well aware that it's the same and thought you had changed enough to get away with it. I don't buy that you just happened to have a dress ona red hangar, to the left of a black script font with red sans serif underneath. nope.

Speaking of which, i guess Muzik disappeared never to be heard from again?:p

[PrintDriver]

I'll bet if you put 20 designers in 20 different closed rooms and asked each to do a logo for the "Little Black Dress Society" you'd get 20 very similar versions of a little black dress and probably a script font. It's not inconceivable for two designers to come up with very similar concepts. The coat hanger is a giveaway. I don't think I'd have thought to put a little black dress on a coat hanger...

[garricks]

caleb, I never meant to imply (infer?) that you did anything shady. All I'm saying is the logos are too similar and would likely cause litigation.

As to the trademark issue, if theirs is a charitable organization 501(c)3 that provides a service, they can use a service mark (SM) and protect the name and associated graphics. ™ and ® are similar, but cover goods, not services.

As to the two examples you provide, here's an excerpt from each:

Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. has been fighting with the Polo Association since the early 1980s over trademark issues and had won a previous suit over an earlier version of the logo.

In February 1976, NBC was sued by the Nebraska ETV network for trademark infringement since the new NBC logo was virtually identical to the ETV logo. An out-of-court settlement was reached in which NBC gave ETV new equipment and a mobile color unit (valued at over $800,000) in exchange for allowing NBC to retain their logo. In addition, NBC paid $55,000 to ETV to cover the cost of designing and implementing a new logo.”

And both of those logos had text that was different attached to the associated graphic.

Can you imagine how expensive the Polo Ralph Lauren fight was?

That's why my company does searches for logos and service names before we start to use them. When I start a new logo project I sketch out several ideas, but before I refine them I do an informal Internet search to ensure my idea isn't already out there. If it is, I discard it.

[calebm12]

Garicks....my apologies for being defensive. I cant emphasize enough how much this forum has furthered my learning and knowledge in so many areas. I certaintly dont want to come across as a member who cant take a little criticism. you and especially budafest have chimed in many times to different posts and have been very helpful. Chalk it up to a frustrating week. All in all, the ideas for this have been scratched and i am back to square one...probably for the best.
thanks

[budafist]

That's why my company does searches for logos and service names before we start to use them. When I start a new logo project I sketch out several ideas, but before I refine them I do an informal Internet search to ensure my idea isn't already out there. If it is, I discard it.

That's actually an excellent idea. Of course there is always a chance there is a logo out there that is similar to yours that doesn't come up in the first few pages of a Google search, but if it does, you need to move on and create something different. Don't see it as an obstacle, see it as a challenge to create something more original.

I guess the next thing is to portray this logo without a dress illustration? Can it be done?

[garricks]

caleb, no apology necessary. I don't think you were being overly defensive, just defending your position.

I would just hate to see you go down that road unwarned. It's not a pretty place you end up in!

I look forward to seeing your next work :D

[Sketcher]

Apple is dealing with a similar situation:

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/04/05.1.shtml

Although the logos look different, there are enough similarities to possibly cause a trademark infringement.

And about you're post that said society's logos can't be trademarked, I'm really having a hard time believing that. And even if the other logo isn't trademarked, you as a designer still have an obligation to be completely original in your designs.

[PrintDriver]

Apple's lawsuit is silly. There's another thread on that around here somewhere.

Yes, it is up to a designer to be original in their design. But that still does not mean they can't come up with a similar idea that someone else had before them of which they are totally unaware. This only points out the importance of Trademark searches for logo clients. A logo is not just another pretty picture. It's a very important part of any corporate entity's identity and you want to be preeetty darn sure no one else's looks like it enough to be confused with it. Look at the recent flap over the Quark logo (Quark ended up changing theirs). Or the old NBC/NebraskaTV logo fiasco (NBC won that one but at a heavy cost).
Here's an excellent article by Jeff Fisher on the subject.
http://www.creativelatitude.com/logo_notions/logo_notions_1105.html