Criticism... the Good and the Bad.

You know how sometimes you have a realization about your own kind? When you take a step back and discover something about them and yourself that changes the way you think? I had one of those this weekend.


BACKGROUND: I've been helping the USU athletics dept. get ready to unveil the new logo that NIKE helped create for them. Nike brand Pres is a USU alum and was a big part in getting us hooked up with the whole thing. My office helped make vid's and graphics so the community knew about it and the press conference that would show the highly anticipated logos. I also put some photoshoots together to use for other publications.


Here's me and Nesbita hangin with all the athletes who are modeling their new uniforms. I admit, I was a little starstruck.

I look like a chubby shrimp I know. It's not very often I stand next to people who are a foot taller than me.


Here's the new logos:

My own critique of them? At first I thought they were a little personalityless but in the process of designing with them these past few weeks and seeing them used in different platforms as well as researching other successful athletics logos I'm definitely a fan. They're clean, straight-forward and versatile and represent the university pretty well. It took Nike 18 months from start to finish to do because of research and execution and many drafts and preliminaries. I was able to talk to Nike's creative director/designer who gave me a few more details. Crazy how long it took considering how simple they are but it proves how much careful thought went into them.


Now back to my original statement. As soon as the logos were released the USU design community attacked them with words of disgust like "generic, boring, I could've made it in 10 mins, overhyped, they should've hired USU students to do it, I should get a job at Nike because they need a designer, no concept of negative space, awful, the old one was better" etc...


There were mostly positive comments from the big Utah State fans who all seemed to love it as well as a few "it's a step up" type of comments.


I've had that I-want-to-laugh-because-I'm-so-annoyed type of feeling in my gut since then. I mean, everyone's entitled to their opinion but since when did 1-year-out-of-college designers become qualified to so heavily critique the work of a billion dollar, international, very experienced company who have been extremely successful? Comparing it to other professions makes it seem even more ridiculous. I thought designers claimed to be open-minded artists types. In reply to all the negative comments I was the only one at first to defend it. After some back-and-forth commenting they started coming around and saying it was at least better than past logos.


We're in a world of youtube, facebook, twitter where stating personal comments in seclusion is made extremely available, - and yes, I know me writing on my blog falls into the same category. I've realized we're changing into a culture of opinionation without thoughtful consideration. It expands way beyond designers, although I think designers are some of the biggest culprits because we're trained to think very critically. This last General Conference had some rebuking on the matter specifically from Elder Holland and Pres Uchtdorf who told us to stop being babies and holding grudges and judging people when we have no clue what's going on in their life. Obviously judgement is an essential part in making it through life safely (both physically and spiritually) but it's generally an act only God is qualified to do.


Sooo, sorry for using my blog as a ranting outlet but sometimes thoughts have to be written down and/or talked about to make sense ya know? Thank goodness for my engineer husband who thinks so differently than me and makes it difficult to fall into the habit of thinking I'm right all the time. Although he still lets me be right often enough for me to think I'm smart.