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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
UH logo angers
folks to the letterThis is a first. I'm probably the last person in Hawaii to weigh in on the new proposed logos for the University of Hawaii. Usually, when there's some "makin' fun of" to be done, I'm right at the front of the pack.
But everyone in the state except me has given their opinion of the two proposed logos, which, not surprisingly, look like nothing more than the letter "H" on ecstasy. The last person to chime in, I believe, was a unbathed gentleman living out of a shopping cart on the Kewalo Basin side of Ala Moana Park who described the two logos under consideration as "fine examples of postmodern expressionism, subtly influenced by the Dada Movement, with elements of Eastern mystical motifs and, hey man, got any Ripple?"
So there is really nothing left to say about the proposed logos, which leaves us in kind of a bind since we have several inches of white space to fill.
Here's the deal when it comes to logos: They always suck, and they always cost too much to design. But after a while, people forget how much they cost and get used to seeing them around. Some people even grow to love them.
Glenn Yoshiyama knows the drill. He's the guy who designed the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau's new logo in 1997. The HVCB had been using a Hawaiian warrior as its logo, but someone decided it was too old-fashioned and didn't send the right message. Most states that depend on tourism don't use warriors as their welcoming image, for obvious reasons.
The HVCB wanted a logo that said "Hawaii," and so Yoshiyama came up with a logo that literally said "Hawaii." Some people complained that it was silly to pay someone to come up with a logo that said "Hawaii," even if it was designed using most of the primary colors. But I've come to really like that logo, which does convey the sense of "Sex! Party! and Adventure!" you'll find within any HVCB office on any given day.
WHAT RANKLES many about the UH logo is not that it simply is a jazzed-up "H," but that the university paid $82,000 to a Maryland design firm to jazz it up. For that kind of money, I could have come up with an "H" so tricked out it could have its own Mardi Gras float. Say what you will about the HVCB logo, but at least it was designed locally.
Others are questioning why Hawaii's premier institution of high education is even bothering with a new logo when there are better things the money could be used for, like higher education, for instance.
The fact is, one overpriced, mainland-designed "H" will be chosen as the new UH logo. And we'll get used to it. The cool thing is that everyone in Hawaii whose name starts with "H" will be able to scan the other "H" into their computer and use it as their own, professionally designed $82,000 family logo for which they didn't pay a penny.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com