Partners In Design

10.16.2007

Sound off


Branding the ubiquitous yellow cab in New York mus have been a daunting task. The New York times City Room blog had a feature today inviting several designers to take on the critique of the new NYC Taxi logo. It is interesting to read the designers takes on something that is so fundamental to the cityscape here in New York.

I agree with that the new logo typeface for NYC is horrendous. It is one step away from being illegible. I also think that the T in the circle is too close to the Subway logos and signage. Since taxis are not part of the MTA why would you equate them. Will tourists start to think that you can swipe your Metro card for a cab ride?

Partners Sound off! I want to hear what you have to say about the new logo.

Full Post on NYTimes.com

5 comments:

Laz said...

I agree with you whole-heartedly Christine. The new logo is quite horrible. I definetly dont think they should have used those typefaces. And everything comes off way too unbalanced. You have this small, clunky 'NYC'followed by a elongated and separated 'Taxi'. I find it unnecessary to separate the T with the circle device. Meh.. leave it to them.. They should have called Pentagram to save the world again and continue staking their claim to design world domination.

Paul said...

It's pretty bad. The NYC is just awful- I just dont get why it's so chunky! And just as everyone else has said- why the hell is the T in a circle? It does NOTHING!

This is all (unfortunately) part of a larger 're-branding' effort by the city and is going along with a world wide "NYC Visit" ad campaign:

http://nycvisit.com/

They also switched from "I Love NY" to "This Is New York City". Which I think is painfully vague and lame. I understand what they were going for, but it just falls so damn flat. (Though to be fair "I Love NY and the Milton Glaser-designed mark is still the official slogan of the STATE).

The ONE SINGLE BRIGHT (and when I say 'bright', I mean AWESOME) part of these entire mess...is the flagship commercial/video they produced. It's just great:

http://nycvisit.com/video/

(Click the 'play full screen'...the quality is a bit better).

Or YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W31mr2wonos

Alexandra said...

Yes, the commercial is amazing. But if you remove the new "slogan" from the spot, it become vague and does not stand up to the classic "I Love NY".

What a fiasco.

Christine said...

The commercial is great, but I am not looking forward to the "Ask a New Yorker" Campaign. I already get enough people asking me where the World Trade Center is that it takes all I have not to answer, "You mean was."

"I love NY" will be the classic. Can you imagine "This is New York" t-shirts? Something tells me that those people will be the but of many joke when sporting one.

Anonymous said...

I agree. Ugly as hell. A city full of the world's best graphic designers and they come up with this?