"Ugh. Look at that thing. It's just so big and blobby and, ugh. It's awful." If you haven't heard those words uttered recently, clearly you haven't walked around NYC in the past few weeks. The new NYC logo, which has been smathered all over the city, particularly visible on kamikaze cabs, is flat out atrocious. It's so big, and blobby and, ugh.
The new logo was a "gift" from SmartDesign. It's the thought that counts, right? Well, I don't know what the hell they were thinking because the logo is seriously flawed, both from a pragmatic and an aesthetic point of view.
On initial examination, the logo seems to be blobby, but upon closer study the keen observer that the font has gone all RoboCop on us and consists only of straight lines, a la United from House Industries. But the designer clearly had no understanding of scale and viewing distance, because once you print this thing out on a piece of paper larger than your normal 8.5 x 11 printer, and look at it from 10 feet away, the lines fade away and you are left with on massive ligature gone wrong. I swear, it's like, "WHEN LIGATURES ATTACK." Check FOX for your local broadcast times.
But wait, there's more! SmartDesign has also designed a taxi logo, and glued that onto the rear end of the RoboCop blob. That mark, which has a hugely awkward relationship to the former (The height of the letters is taller, but they both have the same baseline—it makes the NYC look like a footnote or lazy dyslexic exponent. The Taxi mark also features rounded letters. I've always been a huge proponent of contrast. Used correctly it creates powerful communication. But when you stick rounded letters next to almost rounded letters, things get really wacky. Then, to add insult to injury, they've taken the T and circumscribed it with a big circle, reminiscent of Massimo Vignelli's subway design. So now the darn thing reads T--AXI.
Equally comical is the fare sticker. You can't read it. At all. (Maybe that's intentional!) The font has been downsized and the line spacing has been decreased. I also particularly enjoy the "Bathroom Man Hailing a Cab" pictogram. It's so.......charming.
The only benefit to this whole design is the nice derivation of checkers on the back of the cab. Just enough heritage to be iconic, just enough spice to be fresh and new.
But it looks like this design is here to stay. The TLC is requiring the changes, and charging upwards of $40 dollars for the stickers. I'm sad. We're in the design capital of the world, and we've been given a gift by SmartDesign that's just, well, stupid.
Dead bang on, Matthew.