CASE STUDY: CHANEL

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: FRANCE

INDUSTRY: FASHION

Hey friends, everyone's favorite logo inspector here with a quick look this week at one of the more iconic logos in the fashion world, if not the world itself. Yes, it's CHANEL. Forgive me if I seem more surprised at the story behind this brand than some of you, but fashion isn't necessarily my thing, and if it is yours, that's cool too.

But yes, Chanel as a brand was the brainchild of Gabrielle Chanel, better known to history as "Coco Chanel." I thought this was some long story about socialites and children of some magnate putting gobs of capital into their fashion pet projects, and I couldn't have been more wrong. Ms. Chanel grew up in obscurity and relative poverty, and was very much a self-made women. She moved to Paris in the first decade of the 20th century and worked as a seamstress while moonlighting as a cabaret singer at night. One of the more famous songs she sang to soldiers was a song called "Who Has Seen Coco?" In time, it became her nickname, and it stuck when she went on to create her own brand of clothing. Far be it from me to rattle off her historical importance to that industry, but I will say that she built the brand herself by innovating fashion itself, establishing the famous women's Chanel suits, the "little black dress," and of course her famous fragrance, "Chanel No. 5."

THE LOGO

The logo is one of the staples of style and prestige and fashion in the modern Western world, and it's one of those designs whose aesthetic merit and flare are less important than the tradition it carries. Ms. Chanel designed the mark itself, and its two interlocking "C's" obviously stand for her inherited first name and her born surname. There's some interesting interplay between foreground and background within those C's— the more I look at it, the more I start seeing that white, almost almond shaped "thing" in the center, and those two fishtail forms reaching in at either side. But for the most part, it's fairly basic. But, as we've discussed before, in the branding world, there's nothing at all wrong with that.

I love the symmetry. We're symmetrical objects, we people. Have you ever noticed how things that look the same on one side as the other just tend to catch your eye, feel right, feel like that's intuitively how they should be? There's a lot of great articles and studies out there about why human beings crave symmetry in the world around them, how we finding it relaxing or reassuring, and how it reinforces some subconscious desire for order and meaning in the world around us. What's interesting about symmetry in design is it automatically creates this sort of quality control or fact-checking function inside us. You see one side a certain way and almost reflexively your eye drifts to the other side to confirm that it is the same. It's like it automatically triggers the Logo inspector in all of us!

We've also discussed here in previous posts the idea of gender in graphic design. Some designs feel more masculine, and some more feminine. So obviously, a logo for a woman's fashion empire would intuitively be designed as feminine and soft and gentle, right? The answer, of course, is no. This logo is bold, strong, geometric, and balanced, and features a strong, widely stances set of letters to depict its name. Why is that?

I read in this article that Ms. Chanel was originally inspired by a set of ornate windows in a home she lived in as a child, but she did not create the logo until 1925. As a designer and something of a student (and teacher) of the history of graphic design, there are some historical cues that we might follow to see her train of thought in this mark's creation. For example, it's not that feminine stylings in design had not been cultivated at this time; quite the opposite. The Art Nouveau style of design, featuring organic lines and feminine beauty, had already had its day in the sun, peaking somewhere around 1910 or so. At that point, Ms. Chanel was in Paris, of all places, so I'm sure it was all around her and had become the standard for advertising, packaging, and design in general. In other words, it had become status quo.If you might think that this would be the perfect aesthetic styling for a fashion designer trying to make a mark with women's dresses and styles at the dawn of the Roaring 20's, you may be predictably right. And I'm sure that's why Chanel did NOT go this route.

The 20's saw the emergence of several ideologies of design in art, architecture, and yes, advertising. Art Deco had arrived in Paris by this time, featuring strong, clean, sharp lines that implied power and industry. Likewise modernism was evolving rapidly, featuring simplistic interpretations of the real world that focused less on recreating reality and more about interpreting it in a new aesthetic way.

I would think that all of these factors led Coco Chanel to create her logo the way she did; as a departure from the old, as something bold and masculine, as an almost abstract symbol that became its own visual point of reference. Its roots lie more in traditional French Art Deco (what you and I think of as "Art Deco" probably lies more in the American reception of the Art Deco style, i.e. the look of skyscrapers and Ayn Rand cityscapes and vintage Superman cartoons, etc). But yet there's more to that Chanel logo than that. There's something very abstract in its simplicity, almost suggesting that you should be trying to "see" something in those interlocked C's that isn't actually there. 

TYPOGRAPHY

The typeface is available today, I've seen clones called "Chanel" and "Couture" and a few others that essentially exist to capture the design decisions that went into the Chanel name. But the original typography in the branding was a hand drawn typeface that was just following modern aesthetics; a bold, broad-columned sans serif faces was hardly unique in that window of time, but it was fresh and new and helped channel a sense of something stylish and modern.

What's amazing is that over the next fifty years that same art direction of the Chanel brand, and even Coco Chanel herself, became a standard of timeless style and sophistication as a result of the products that were associated with it. You can see here as these advertisements evolved from the 20's into the 60's, the design remained consistent, but just FEELS more and more substantial as they pass down through time. As I've said in the past, graphic design can be created to invoke many things, but tradition can never be invented.

In the end, it's a great example of how a brand, a logo, even just a name, can have decades of equity and user appreciation attached to it. The style or the design decisions really aren't as important as the product and its emotional and material value to the user, which is almost funny to hear myself say because as a designers and artists, we're constantly trying to tell ourselves otherwise. 

In any case, the Chanel brand is one of the more famous ones in the landscape of logos, whether you're a fashion person or not. I love how simple icons like these become a part of the visual vocabulary of our civilization that transcends individual countries, languages and societies. Simple shapes like the Chanel C's or, say, the golden arches become archetypes that we just recognize, regardless of who we are. It's almost like these logos are as integral to the human condition as letters or numbers. Or maybe I just think about this stuff too much.

What do you guys think? Leave comments on the Twitter page! I'd love to hear some feedback. Thanks!

Sources include: Wikipedia, Medium.com, bbc.co.uk, etc

CASE STUDY: The National Football League Shield Logo

Country of Origin: USA

Industry: Football

Today marks the beginning of the NFL's 2021 Draft, which has become nothing short of a sort of holiday and is as prime-time mandatory viewing as the Super Bowl itself among football diehards. (Personally I prefer when it just took place over the course of one weekend, but that's just me.) As such, I thought it was a fine time to take a look at the logo of the NFL itself, a mark that carries all the legitimacy of the corporate giant in one compact, instantly identifiable graphic.

HISTORY

From what I can gather, the familiar shield we basically associate with came about sometime in the 30's after the the NFL had started to establish itself as a viable league. You can see that even in that early striped version, the basic building blocks were there. The nicely packaged evolution graphic here (courtesy of the great Todd Radom) doesn't include all of its iterations— there are a few more variants, and I'd suggest heading over to Chris Creamer's logo site if you want to see more.

But you can see that all of the basic pieces are in place. The shamelessly patriotic shield, which was probably much more commonplace of a thing in the 30's than it is today is there, as is the football, and the stars, and the acronym of the league itself, the National Football League.

You'll notice that the stars vary greatly. It seems like there's more, and then there's more... and now there's only 8? Well, the stars used to signify each individual team in the league, and that in and of itself is problematic. By making such a choice, you create a logo that actively features components that are in flux. Sports leagues grow, and add teams, and occasionally subtract them. The NFL had a situation where the logo had to be redesigned every time a new team was added, and often with painfully non-symmetrical results. So for the most recent update, developed by the league itself in 2008, the choice was made to reduce the stars to 8— one for every division. The solution should prove to be less volatile and prone to change, plus it looks cleaner. Any good artist can tell you all those stars would prove to be a nightmare in cases when the logo would have to be reduced in size, or rendered in embroidery, etc. The 8 stars are clean and offer much more consistency in reproduction.

The other biggest change we see, and the one that surprised me the most in 2008, was the changing of the typeface. I always loved the old, throwback serifed letterforms of the NFL logo I grew up with, the curved stem on the bottom of the F, and of course that lustrous swirling L. That type of L is what typographers might call a teardrop lacrimal or teardrop terminal, and probably saw its start with calligraphers in the Middle Ages who wanted to "end" their letters without sloppy finishes or exits.

For me, even as a kid, that teardrop on the end of the "L" was a vital piece of visual DNA in the NFL logo, but the league chose to scrap it. It is a bit busy, and does get very close to the column of the L. Perhaps they did some testing with younger viewers who thought it looked a bit too much like a lowercase "b." But for whatever the reason, they simplified the acronym, and used a more squared, chiseled typeface. It still fits the personality of the brand, if not discarding some of the obvious visual history. And, truth be told, that might have had some say in the decision as well.

It's also worth noticing how the orientation of the football changed in the 2008 revamp. This is very clever design work, as it's a visual nod to the Lombardi Trophy itself, awarded to each year's Super Bowl winner. See how the new angle and vector treatment of the ball is styled to remind you of the prize at the end of the road. I love how the design team basically reworks the NFL's own mythology into itself like this. A very strong change that's worth the entire rollout of a new brand, in my opinion.

A SHIELD

The NFL's official mark is instantly recognizable. If you're in any way used to seeing this thing, you can see it anywhere and know exactly what it is and dial up whatever emotional attachment you have to American professional football. But what exactly is it about this thing that makes it so unique?

Trying my best to remove my own lifelong connection to this brand, I'll try to approach it simply as a design professional and try to pretend I've never seen it before. So, looking at this thing in terms of pure aesthetics, the shape of the mark stands out. Yes, it's a shield, and this shape of a shield obviously goes back centuries in western civilization-- and yet, for the latter half of the 20th century and up until today, the NFL mark has basically appropriated this shape. When you see this shape, even if you're at Medieval Times or your local Renaissance Fair, you probably think about football, which says a lot. It's probably worth considering that there's some latent or subconscious connection with shields and war and masculinity, but that might be reaching a bit deep. But make no mistake, you're not going to see the Hallmark Movie Channel using a strong shield silhouette anytime soon.

The shield as a shape is bold and has a lot of sharp angles, across the top, the point at the bottom, etc. Its aggressive points boldly stab at the surrounding white space, and that creates visual interest. It's also extremely symmetrical, which implies balance, trustworthiness, and order.

Those protruding outside features also propose problems for designers handling this mark and inserting it into clean design. I believe I have mentioned before what I refer to as a logo's footprint— basically, the horizontal and vertical real estate it must take up in any design. If you look at the graphic to the left, you'll see how much vertical white space outside the logo is basically used up because of the sharp points at the top and the bottom. Well, who cares, right? Well, designers care, especially NFL designers, because let's say there's a spot on a web page for these graphics, and it's only, say, 100 pixels tall. Well, because of those exterior points, the entire footprint must be squeezed into those 100 pixels, and as a result, the core elements of the logo may only take up about 80 to 85 pixels.

Imagine, let's say, that you want to put your car in a garage. But for whatever reason, you decided to add some tail wings to your car. Now, the main part of your car would fit in that garage perfectly, but those wings make it a much more precarious fit, or perhaps it just can't get in there as a result. So your options are to pay for a larger garage, or hypothetically "shrink" the entire car to fit inside. That analogy kind of breaks down at the end, haha, but I think you get the idea.

MASCULINE

This thing is all about STRONG, TOUGH, CLEAN, BOLD lines and elements— The chiseled typeface, the super clean vector football rendered in one color, the white stars contrasting against that blue ground— all of this is some conglomeration of toughness and patriotism that appropriately screams "American Football!" This is all about audience. Graphic artists can and do influence the connection between brands and its viewers by using design cues that resonate with portions of the public that their clients intend to connect with. I'm sure you've all heard the term target audience before, and branding professionals develop iconography that helps build those connections.

Some of my past students have had struggles understanding the concept of gender in design. For example, one student thought that creating masculine or feminine designs basically boiled down to using pink or blue in his palette. But there are lots of ways logos can be rendered to look more male or female. Feminine designs can feature more graceful lines, curved and elegant, as opposed to bold and strong. Colors might be used, but not in such glaringly presumptuous ways as mentioned above— for example, masculine designs tend to use colors that create contrast and visual punch, where more feminine works might employ more subtle or complex color combinations.

However, if an artist really want to pronounce gender in a logo, typically the easiest way to do so is in typeface selection. Typography styles naturally create the illusion of voice and personality as aesthetic elements in design. The fonts you choose can make designs feel angry or funny, happy or sad, frenetic or bored, and yes, male or female.

These are deodorant products from the same brand, Nivea. Notice the differences in colors, typography, and even design elements. It's even worth noting how 'masculine' the Nivea mark itself is, especially on the women's deodorant package, because everything else is designed with a more feminine flair.

For the sake of illustration, I prepared this "alternate" NFL logo. The colors are softer, less primary. Those jagged exterior elements are rounded, smoother. And I chose a typeface that is scripty, flowing, lowercase (UPPERCASE TEXT ALWAYS APPEARS LOUDER AND MORE MASCULINE), and even on a baseline skew or oblique. Does this feel tough to you? Do you think this brand would connect with all those guy's guys who wake up on Sunday mornings in the fall lining up their beer and nachos for a long day in front of the TV?

NOTE: Please, by all means, I am in no way implying that women cannot be tough, bold, strong, aggressive, or any of those things. All I'm saying is these design cues focus on triggering perceptions in audiences, and, quite simply, they work. I am in no way saying that I am a traditionalist or would ever tell any woman what she can or cannot be. I'm just illustrating how brands make their connections with their audiences.

CONCLUSION

The NFL shield is an instantly recognizable mark that calls upon decades of brand equity and association with its loyal, fervent fan base. One thing most sports leagues do well is use their league logo in conjunction with individual teams. Yes, you might be, say, a Packers fan, but you're not going to buy a Green Bay jersey unless it has that NFL shield on the collar. Even more so, what self-respecting Packers fan would want to buy a jersey without the NFL shield?

See, what they're doing there is using the league icon as an element of authenticity. In other words, it's not the real thing unless it has their mark on it, their seal of approval. I'm making it sound foolhardy, but that stamp of authenticity is worth millions and millions of dollars in licensing revenue, and plenty of apparel and product partners pay dearly for the right to slap that shield on the things they turn around and sell to the loyal team fans. Smart business, and smart branding.

What do you all think? Does the NFL shield really mean that much to you? Or is it something that's just there, and you tend to forget about it once the game starts? (Trust me, you don't.) 

Sources Include: NFL.com, Todd Radom, sportslogos.net, Wikipedia, Amazon