I say this because as you drive by an adopt a light ad for Tangerine you see people holding onto a pole (the light pole onto which the adopt a light ad is placed) for dear life. Now this is fantastic imagery. I would mark the creative behind that imagery 100% for the concept.

Obviously he knew the medium he was going to use and took that knowledge a step further by integrating it into the final artwork. There is no word for the genius behind this visual.

My problem however is that despite the good use of the medium in graphic design the rest of the ad is extremely poorly thought out. Firstly the artwork, by my estimation, is split up into two separate adopt a light spaces. This is no good because if a driver (target of the ad) sees one adopt a light and not another the message is incomplete.

The next issue i have with Tangerine’s ad on the adopt a light is that there is simply way too much copy on the ad itself. It is beyond me why on earth a designer would let his client strong arm them into turning a brilliant concept into such a poor execution. There is literally too much on each adopt a light space.

in my estimation anyone you are selling broadband to will understand a simple message and go to your site for info (or did tangerine forget they were selling internet?). The ad need never have had more than “broadband internet cheap” and a url.

Not sure who to blame, the client who wouldn’t follow the advice of the graphic designer he hired or the designer who wouldn’t tell his client how crazy the copy demands were… hmmm.

I have worked with a number of clients who want logos and without a doubt, the most difficult to work with are those that want some sort of image in their logo that is directly related to their product or service.

Now, just to clear the air, I am not talking about the guys who want an image of the name of the company, such as eagle flight wanting a unique form of the eagle to be part of their logo.

Here I am talking about SCR flight and freight wanting a logo that has a plane in it as well as those vehicles that load the freight into the plane and a happy customer somewhere next to the big SCR in Arial typeface, yes… I am talking about you!

To be honest, you don’t need all that, look at the biggest and best known brands out there, Coca-Cola, Google, BBC, Microsoft, Dell etc, they don’t have their core business and customers in their logos, in fact you will find if you dig into these brands that they don’t have imagery in they copy-written logos.

Instead they just have custom fonts or text that they have paid  a bundle to have created for themselves and they have then gone ahead and copy written these.

So, to recap, you don’t need a symbol of your core business, you can have it but you don’t need it, especially when it will be to complex at about 2cm by 2cm, which interestingly enough is likely to be the size most of your potential customers will see it at – on your business card.

You do need an appropriate typeface and relevant customization of this. You do need to select a color that you wish your brandling to be associated with when it grows up.

In fact, to get a good logo, that is all you need, sometimes a simple symbol works, but the key is in simple and sometimes, meaning it doesn’t work for everyone.