Last Updated on January 2, 2022
For months, I’ve examined the branding for this site. After deciding the previous logo didn’t really work, I started looking for a new logo.
What does Burger King, Kodak and Pizza Hut have in common with this blog? We’ll come to that. But first, with this post, I launch a new logo here at Patrick’s Place.
If that logo looks somewhat familiar, you’re not imagining things.
Just shy of two years ago, I launched the last logo design. It featured the bottom half of an orange cut in half. Each wedge of the orange was a different color. Each color represented one of the many topics I cover here.
Orange has been the signature color for this blog for many years now. Even though I’m a graduate of the University of South Carolina, whose rival, Clemson University uses orange as their color, I still like orange.
Having a design that incorporated orange seemed like a good idea. I also liked the idea of having color help represent the different topics.
But since launching that logo, I realized that it just didn’t speak to anything particularly relatable.
So I made the decision to find a new logo that might do a better job. I decided to revert to a logo built around the letter P. This is Patrick’s Place, after all, and since I do almost every post that ever runs, the blog is a very personal expression of me.
A logo, then, that is built around some degree of personalization seemed to make more sense.
I visited a logo design company and came up with a few favorites. Just for fun, I threw in a few possible designs I didn’t particularly care for. And I threw in this blog’s previous logo.
Then I did a survey. I asked Facebook friends — many of whom likely didn’t know I even have a blog — which design they found the most visually appealing.
The one I thought would get the most votes didn’t. One of the designs that I thought was marginal received the most votes. (But in fairness, it also received a decent amount of negative feedback, too.)
The previous design, it turns out, received the second-highest number of positive comments.
I then decided to do a quick test of the top two designs to see how they might work in different applications. It turns out that the previous design faired better than the potential new look.
Pizza Hut, Kodak and Burger King?
Six months ago, I mentioned fast-food giant Burger King announced it would rebrand its stores. That “rebrand” included bringing back the familiar logo most of us grew up with. (It’s not the exact design; they reworked the typeface a bit.) But it’s close enough to be instantly familiar.
Five years ago, Kodak likewise resurrected its fancy K icon that originally appeared in 1971 and served as the company’s primary identity for 35 years. In the new version, the name Kodak was stacked vertically down the right side of the K. But the design remained recognizable.
And then there’s Pizza Hut, which, like Burger King, rebranded with something meant to look more modern but that nearly instantly began to feel dated. So, two years ago, Pizza Hut went back in time as well.
Just to be clear, I don’t delude myself even for a fraction of a second into thinking my blog’s logo could be as famous. But the retro mood did help me make the decision to go with something familiar.
You’ll still see instances of the colorful orange until they’re all replaced.
One of these days, I’ll be finished with that little project.
I just hope that by then, I won’t be tempted to contemplate another logo change. I think the orange P will be here to stay this time around!
