Episode Transcript
Don Mock 0:19
All right, episode 76. We’re back and we’re back with a special guest and a special friend, J. Gonzo. Say hello, J. Gonzo.
J. Gonzo 0:25
Hey, how’s it going, everybody?
Don Mock 0:27
All right. I don’t even know how to do an intro for you, to tell you the truth. Because you are a renaissance man.
J. Gonzo 0:33
Multi-hyphenate, I think, is what we call that these days.
Don Mock 0:35
Yeah, and I don’t even know how long we’ve known each other. It’s been quite a number of years, obviously.
J. Gonzo 0:40
I’d say coming up on 10. If not more.
Don Mock 0:41
Yeah. So International Man of Mystery.
J. Gonzo 0:45
There we go.
Don Mock 0:45
Of course, number one, but I would also say full-time designer, art director, Creative Director, full-time comic book illustrator. And dare I say, publisher.
J. Gonzo 0:56
Yeah, I mean, I do publish my own book.
Don Mock 0:58
And full time tattoo artist.
J. Gonzo 1:00
I’m more part time on tattoo artist.
Don Mock 1:01
Okay, so two and a half full times is what we’ll say.
J. Gonzo 1:03
Yeah. Post arm break. I only have like, two and a half, three hours, of tattooing in me at a time. And I really pay the price the next day.
Don Mock 1:11
Do you really?
J. Gonzo 1:12
Yeah. I mean, it’s just part of having two metal plates and 17 screws in your arm.
Don Mock 1:16
Oof, that sounds brutal.
J. Gonzo 1:17
That was bad.
Don Mock 1:18
Yeah. How long? You were on the shelf for a while.
J. Gonzo 1:21
Actually, I broke it on a Friday, surgery on Saturday. I went back to work on on Monday… I’m sorry, Tuesday. We had Monday off. I had this weird part time gig at this tech company in Scottsdale. They were looking to kind of organize their branding. I mean, I could explain to you what they do, but it took me three months to learn what they do.
Don Mock 1:41
Oh my Lord.
J. Gonzo 1:42
But luckily, I was just doing some… I already had the assets. I was just creating some packaging for them. So it was a lot of like, you know, building guidelines and what have you.
Don Mock 1:50
Sure.
J. Gonzo 1:50
So I could still use a mouse. I had to lift my still band- or cast-
Don Mock 1:59
Ginger arm?
J. Gonzo 2:00
It was still in the cast at that point. But I could lift it up and set it on top of my mouse and then Jjust kind of use my wrist to do stuff. But if I needed to push a button, I had to use my other hand to move it over and put my hand down. So I did work. It was- God. I mean, it was probably six months before I did a drawing that I felt was real, that I could put out in the world. Actually, it was that poster for the Jungle of Mystery, that Jungla de Mysterioso that’s up. That was the first thing I drew that was like, “Okay, this can go world,” post arm break. Then it was probably another full year before I attempted a tattoo again.
Don Mock 2:35
Wow. Okay.
J. Gonzo 2:35
Then I actually been back into it. I just did some work for some people that are coming up around like four hours. That was probably about an hour too much.
Don Mock 2:43
Yeah. Well, as you know, I’ve only got five and a half hours in me. And I’m done. It’s time to tap out.
J. Gonzo 2:48
You were pre arm break, though.
Don Mock 2:50
Yeah, for sure. For sure. All right, well, that was quite a little tangent we went on but, um… I’ve invited Gonzo on the podcast. We’ve known each other for years, obviously. We have a love of comics together. We have a love of advertising and design together. And a love of tattooing. So you’re on the podcast and what would you like to talk about? What’s today’s topic? I don’t even really know.
J. Gonzo 3:08
I think we were going to talk about logo logo flexibility.
Don Mock 3:11
Logo flexibility.
J. Gonzo 3:12
Or maybe diverse or, what is the word I’m looking for? Ah, I lost it. Let’s stick with versatility. There we go.
Don Mock 3:16
We’re gonna go with versatility or flexibility.
J. Gonzo 3:18
Yeah, there we go, yeah.
Don Mock 3:19
So when that when you bring up that topic, what does that mean to you? Speaking as a designer?
J. Gonzo 3:24
Well, I just think that it means, when you create a mark for somebody, you have to look beyond that mark on white paper under perfect printing circumstances. So to me, it’s always the the fun run test. So if you sponsor a fun run-
Don Mock 3:38
Oh my God, we’re like two brothers from another mother. Because I say this. I always joke about the one color mark on the back of the kids T-shirt.
J. Gonzo 3:44
Absolutely, because at some point your company is going to sponsor a little league team or a fun run.
Don Mock 3:49
Absolutely.
J. Gonzo 3:49
And you’re going to end up in a LogoLand, you and 93 other logos.
Don Mock 3:53
Exactly.
J. Gonzo 3:53
And an amateur designer is going to handle your mark, at that point. You need to make sure that it looks good on the back of a black T-shirt. One color. Or the back of a white t-shirt, one color. You need to have both versions of that. I gotta say- small tangent here- a personal peeve of mine is when you can tell they gave zero thought to the negative version of their logo.
Don Mock 4:12
The reverse diversion.
J. Gonzo 4:13
Yeah, because they’ll do… like I did a logo for… and I’m sure you’ve touched on this before… whenever you build a branding system and you work out every contingency and you give it to a client. You just know they’re gonna mess it up.
Don Mock 4:23
Oh yeah, for sure. Or you’ve given them 68 versions of the logo. And then it’s Hey, can you send me an EP, can you send me? I need a PD? Can I get some- then it’s like you’ve got it all.
J. Gonzo 4:33
The worst is when they ask for a JPEG. When they ask for a JPEG or something, my first question is why? What are you trying to do?
Don Mock 4:37
We give them all JPEGs, anyway. We format everything properly. So our JPEGs are RGB. You know what I mean? Otherwise-
J. Gonzo 4:38
You can’t give them a JPEG of a reverse that logo, if you have it on the field of black. And what black are they using, versus what black you gave them?
Don Mock 4:49
That’s what PNGs are for.
J. Gonzo 4:50
Yeah, Man. Absolutely. The graphic standards I give people have… when it’s printed on black and it says that at the top of the page, then I put the file name under each of those versions, so they know what they’re looking for. And I have a little thing in the back of the books that tells them what… there’s a section of file types for print, file types for web.
Don Mock 5:11
For screen.
J. Gonzo 5:12
Or broadcast. It tells them, Hey, if you’re making this, these are the types of files you want to give.
Don Mock 5:17
So what do you think? I mean, you’re down in the in the weeds, which I love. But what do you think is the most important aspect when designing for flexibility of a logo? Knowing that it’s going in multiple different places?
J. Gonzo 5:30
Excellent question. I will give you the number one thing you have to consider when you’re designing a logo, whether it be wordmark, or icons, or combinations of the two, some kind of monograph, what have you. You have to consider what it’s going to look like 90 by 90 pixels.
Don Mock 5:42
Yes.
J. Gonzo 5:42
Because 98% of your customers or your potential customers first interaction with you, they’re going to Google you, they’re going to check out either your social media, your LinkedIn, something like that. Or some little preview is going to come up on Google itself. It’s going to be that that profile picture that’s a little circle. So if you can’t look good in a 90 by 90 Circle, absolutely, that says your company or encapsulates it. It doesn’t have to be the full logo, it could be some aspect of it.
Don Mock 6:07
Yeah, an icon or derivitive, secondary.
J. Gonzo 6:10
Exactly. Or even tertiary, at that point. Just some encapsulation of it that looks good on light mode and dark mode, because you don’t know what people are going to use on their phones.
Don Mock 6:19
Yeah. Smart, buddy.
J. Gonzo 6:20
You have to create something that lives in that space, because before they get to your perfect- I did a little graph on the video I made, and there’s the things you control and the things you can’t control.
Don Mock 6:31
I love that, I love that, and we’ll share that at some point.
J. Gonzo 6:34
Oh, I’m plugging it at the end of this.
Don Mock 6:35
Please do.
J. Gonzo 6:36
But the things you own, your branding system, your letterhead, your e-sig, all of that. Before they get to that, they’re going to Google you, and then they’re going to find their way to what your SEO, whatever that points them to. And at some point, it’s going to end up with some kind of social media, whether it be LinkedIn, or Instagram, or Pinterest, or whatever. That’s going to be 90 by 90. That font they use is the default font. You have no control over the light mode, dark mode, all of that.
Don Mock 7:03
Now, that’s a great answer to a difficult question. I guess my follow up question for that is, where do you start? If you think that’s one of the most important. If the 90 by 90 pixel screen application, whether it’s the full logo, or a stripped down icon, or a derivative of the logo. I use Tesla as an example, because everyone’s familiar with that brand.
J. Gonzo 7:25
It’s terrible social media presence, by the way.
Don Mock 7:27
Tesla?
J. Gonzo 7:28
Yeah, cuz it’s just that strip of logo through the middle of the circle.
Don Mock 7:29
Yeah, but where I’m going with this is, Tesla has the T. Like the hood ornament. Then there’s the type that’s on the back of the car. And never shall the two meet. You never really use the icon and the type together. People don’t even think about that. But when I mentioned it, they’re like, Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s right. That makes sense. So I guess, using that as an example, or throwing it back to you, just as as a designer… The question is, if we think that’s the most important part, when you get a logo assignment for a company XYZ, or you’re holding a coffee cup company, where do you start on logo designs?
I mean, I start with research. So I have a questionnaire I have people fill out. So I kind of get a feel. This speaks to my overall, I suss out what their brand promises. But when it comes to the… so let’s assume that you’ve sussed that brand promise, you sussed out brand pillars.
Yeah. You’ve got all the information you need to know.
J. Gonzo 8:20
Presented it back to the client, you’ve made a brief. So your brief is to support these promis and pillars. Then you’re gonna make a mark. So are you going to make a logo for them? I’m trying to support the ethos. I’m trying to do what’s right, but know that I need to pull some part of it out. So there’s never one approach. I don’t design an icon and then try to put a word mark under it. I don’t always start with the word mark and then put a bug with it- or icon with it. I just start to think about logos that could work for them. While I’m doing that, I try to think, is there some opportunity here-
Don Mock 8:21
Interesting.
J. Gonzo 8:22
- For me to pull out like the hood ornament from it? Or does it have to be some third thing, and if it has to be some third thing that I will design it separate from it. But I think-
Don Mock 8:57
Once you have the essence of the mark, you can then start to extract for different uses.
J. Gonzo 9:02
Yeah. So I just make the mark, in that perfect world, but just in the back of my head, I know that the mark is gonna get divorced at some point. Dad’s gonna need his bachelor pad that lives on social media in 90 by 90. I like to use baseball teams as an example. You know, they have the hat logo. And then they have the word mark across their chest and then whatever, it goes on the-
Don Mock 9:25
And then whatever’s on the sleeve is the third version, tertiary logo.
J. Gonzo 9:30
Then there’s Home and Away, so they have dark colors, light colors, all of that. And sometimes, when it’s for their dark uniform, they just put a white stroke around everything, which is the laziest way to do that.
Don Mock 9:39
So lazy.
J. Gonzo 9:40
So, yeah, you can see that, like I was saying-
Don Mock 9:43
Well reversed out is a pet peeve of yours. And it’s funny, over the years, we’ve grown into… From a first round perspective, whenever we’re showing creative for identities, we only show black and white. We never show anything in color, because color exponentially complicates anything. We’ve chatted about some previous podcasts. But then we’ll also show it in a negative environment.
J. Gonzo 10:07
Oh yeah, I always do the black and white.
Don Mock 10:08
The black and white, exactly.
J. Gonzo 10:09
Or the black field, white field.
Don Mock 10:10
It’s funny. Some marks absolutely do- you can take the lazy man’s approach, and totally reverse it and it works.
J. Gonzo 10:17
Well sometimes, yeah.
Don Mock 10:18
Sometimes but-
J. Gonzo 10:19
- And what I’ve noticed too is, when you do that- and that should take some consideration, because you can see where you can just reverse it out. If you just have the Dodgers LA, it looks fine in white, you reverse it to blue. It’s totally fine.
Don Mock 10:31
Totally works, yeah.
J. Gonzo 10:32
But you take something like the- so I have a great example. I have in my personal experience, I did a branding system for Bob Parsons, the guy who started GoDaddy. He owns a video production facility called Sneaky Big Okay and so I created a raccoon holding a camera as its icon.
Don Mock 10:49
That sounds fun.
J. Gonzo 10:50
It was really fun. We stepped it out and so what we did is, we broke out just-
Don Mock 10:54
I know where this is going before you even tell me.
J. Gonzo 10:56
We go to Ralph the raccoon we have just his head and that’s the social media icon, is a raccoon- white face, black mask. If you reverse that-
Don Mock 11:03
Can’t do it.
J. Gonzo 11:04
Now you’ve got a white mask with little weird white iri- our little little tiny beady black eyes. So I created a version in which it you know, there was a white holding line, but it merged with the white parts of the face, and the black just got knocked out of it, that could then live on dark fields.
Don Mock 11:20
Yeah. But still look like a racoon where it’s got the bandito mask.
J. Gonzo 11:24
Absolutely. Yeah, so you have to build that or you can do that thing where you just add another white stroke on it. But I hate that kind of sport thing where you start adding strokes on strokes on strokes.
Don Mock 11:33
NFL does that all the time. Basically every mark for the NFL has a has an invisible white holding shape around it to protect it from whatever’s around it.
J. Gonzo 11:41
Exactly. The California Angels do the same thing, because they are a red mark that goes on a red field all the time. So it just has a blue outline, and then a white outline behind. Just concentric outlines. Unless you’re a sport team, don’t do it. There’s Just no reason for it.
Don Mock 11:55
Agreed.
J. Gonzo 11:55
Speaking of concentric lines, too, there’s a popular style that I will operate in on occasion, of marks that are made with concentric lines. It’ll be like, the O is made of three lines that make the O. And lot of times visually, when you just reverse that, when it comes out of the white field, because now it’s negative, the it’ll pinch in on itself. Because optically, your eye sees bright more than it sees dark. Yeah, so it’ll actually look like, if you just take the black mark and reverse it to white, these concentric lines that the white one has thicker lines.
Don Mock 12:30
It looks bigger. That’s what I was gonna say.
J. Gonzo 12:31
So you have to go in and just add a stroke to everything and then delete it out of there. So in that case-
Don Mock 12:36
Dude, we are so far down the graphic design hole right now, it’s amazing.
J. Gonzo 12:40
You really have to impress upon your client, look, you have to use this one. I know they look the same, but it’s just enough different, that if you reverse this out, it’s going to look pinched in, like it bled together. You need to use this other one.
Don Mock 12:52
Well, it’s like the difference between true center and optical center.
J. Gonzo 12:55
Mmm,hmmm.
Don Mock 12:54
It’s a weird thing. The align tool in Illustrator and whatnot can be your friend, but can also be your enemy. Punctuation hanging off or you got a W or you start with a T.
Oh, yeah, T’s got to slide over.W’s gotta go the other way. Yeah. It’s got to look right, more than it has to be right.
For sure, for sure.
J. Gonzo 13:15
And the same thing with reversing that logos. So sometimes if you have those concentric line logos, and you reverse it out, you’ll see suddenly, it looks like the lines are thicker. So you got to accommodate that, and impress upon your client, make sure you use this one, and then know they’re gonna screw it up. Because I tell you that studio I did. Also with that studio, we built it to where, they’re a facility that you as an agency could use to go shoot a commercial. They’re facilitating creative endeavors. So they needed to have a brand that wasn’t so outlandish, or so powerful that it would look like it would overpower other people’s creative directions that was coming in there.
Don Mock 13:48
Makes sense.
J. Gonzo 13:48
So it had to be kind of neutral. So we picked this kind of cool cyan. We had a little bit of magenta in there. So it’s nice, clean. It looked clean, accessible. These are all considerations, the emotional consideration of creating a brand. It was this nice blue that was inviting- blue sky, kind of like, “hey, opportunity!” Operating all of that stuff. possibilities. We made business cards that had the reversed out head on a blue field, on one side of the card, which I would call the front. Well, let’s get on this, what’s the front of a business card? The part of the card that just has like a mark or logo, or the card that has the information on it. What do you call the front?
Don Mock 14:27
The front, I would call the side that has all the information on it.
J. Gonzo 14:30
I call that the back.
Don Mock 14:31
Okay. well, Okay.
J. Gonzo 14:33
This is a debate we could have for nine hours.
Don Mock 14:34
Well, here’s another quick tangent. Postcards. You got a piece of direct mail in the mail. You have the side that has the address on it and all the stuff to the left. You flip it over and you have the big image area. What’s the front of the postcard?
J. Gonzo 14:48
The image area. That’s the front.
Don Mock 14:49
I would say the opposite. Because all of your mail is stacked address up. So the postal carrier can do whatever. So when you get your mail, you always get it upside down.
J. Gonzo 15:00
I think I have a designer-centric approach. I think that the more design-ey part is the front.
Don Mock 15:08
No, no, I don’t disagree with you. Nine out of 10 people would say, hey, the front of the postcard is the big image area. However, whenever we’re developing direct mail, and whenever we’re talking about messaging for a consum- forget about design and how pretty it is or how ugly it is. From a messaging perspective, I’m always very sensitive to- excuse me- if you do like a headline subhead, or a first thought, second thought… Well, what’s on what side? Because you’re almost always going to see your address side first.
J. Gonzo 15:36
For me, on business cards, and direct mail. What I would call the front, the image side, the design-ey side, that’s for feel. The other side is for information.
Don Mock 15:47
For a message.
J. Gonzo 15:47
Yeah.
Don Mock 15:48
I don’t disagree with that.
J. Gonzo 15:49
Yeah, so I mean, I guess it’s like, is this the the feel side or is this the message, information side?
Don Mock 15:55
There’s no wrong answer.
J. Gonzo 15:55
No, there isn’t. But I can’t tell you how many arguments with AEs, They’re ike, oh, on the front of the card, and I’m like, that’s not on the front of the card. It’s the back. That’s the front.
Don Mock 16:04
Alright. So you did Ralph on the one side-
J. Gonzo 16:07
Ralph on one side, all the information the other. Nice clean, Swiss design, you know me. You know what I do.
Don Mock 16:12
Absolutely, I love it.
J. Gonzo 16:15
Dude, who ran the company, who got fired six months after it actually opened.
Don Mock 16:18
Spoiler alert.
J. Gonzo 16:19
He was quite snake oil salesmen. This is indicative of probably what got him fired, unilaterally decided that he, as a man, couldn’t have a blue business card. It needed to be black. So he lashed out on his own.
Don Mock 16:35
He printed his-
J. Gonzo 16:36
He probably jumped on Vistaprint or something and made his own business card on black. And reversed out the positive logo.
Don Mock 16:44
Brutal.
J. Gonzo 16:45
And he was the guy, he was the point person. He’s the guy who went out there. He was the new biz guy, he went out to go solicit people to come make film there. He’s showing with this off-brand version of a business card that misuses our own logo. Talk about, he’s putting in a competent, you can’t even master your own brand. You want us to come use your facilities. He couldn’t understand why that was such a big deal.
Don Mock 17:05
It’s pretty funny. I talked about this on a previous podcast. So apologies for those that are avid listeners. But I went and saw Steff Geissbuhler give a lecture. He’s done all sorts of amazing brands over the years. Part of his presentation was, I want to say- Gonzo not even joking- I think it was 50 slides in a row of logos that he had designed, that he had taken pictures of out in the wild.
J. Gonzo 17:05
Misused?
Don Mock 17:09
That had been totally destroyed. You know what I mean? Like stretched, and this and that. His point was, you create this and you work with the brand team, and you do- I’m totally putting words in his mouth. So this is not 100% accurate- But my takeaway, I should say, My takeaway was, you birth these things. and then you put them out in the world. And they turn into misfits. And we care so much about them, but there is a certain level of tolerance. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the Coca Cola script logo here in Atlanta, the motherland of Coca Cola, stretched on a sign or tweaked to this way or that way. I’m like, Oh, my God, you can’t even do that in your own hometown. It’s crazy.
J. Gonzo 18:09
You can’t even stay on top of it. You know, they’re gonna screw it up.
Don Mock 18:12
It’s not surprising to hear somebody go ad hoc and do whatever.
J. Gonzo 18:15
As part of my interaction, my process from hiring me to getting your comprehensive branding system handed to you, is an educational part, where I explain to them why they need to be stewards of the brand. I also bring them on board through the fact… once I’ve determined brand promise and brand pillars, I do a presentation back to them. So at least we’re all pointing toward the same target. I really empower them to feel like they’re a part of the process in a way that they want to be protective of it. Because if you just hand the client something, they don’t have respect for it. If they help earn it, if they help build it, they feel a responsibility to it. Now, whatever turnover or corporate memory, institutional memory ends up in turnover. It happens, but at least you would have the people who are there now and ostensively, in charge of managing it, at least feel empowered. I also explain to them the importance of command of your own assets, that kind of visual acumen of knowing getting it right. Everyone appreciates what Apple and Nike do. We’re talking about branding, gotta talk about Nike. But they don’t understand that it’s more a consistency thing than white space or whatever. No, it’s that every aspect of everything they put out there has been considered in support for that promise. So to do that. That’s like, that’s the thing you’re after. Not the whitespace not the Just DO IT type tagline, whatever. No, no, what you want is that a consideration. Because people sense that more than they can cognate it. It doesn’t become a thought, but if you see a brand that has their stuff buttoned up all the time. Also subconsciously, on a visceral level, like a real reptilian amygdala part of your brain, when you see someone who doesn’t have command of their logo. When you see a reversed out logo made positive, or has an extra outline on it or something, you kind of think, “it’s amateurish.” You might not be able to articulate why, but you know.
Don Mock 18:17
It’s like going into a restaurant and they’ve got Hunts on the table instead of Heinz. It still does the job, but there’s a little bit of a perception there. Maybe I’m being a ketchup snob, and I don’t even love ketchup. I like mustard. Or you can’t articulate it. Something’s wrong, but you can’t really tell what’s wrong. This is a topic for another conversation. But part of what you just went on about, though, about the consistency… there’s an interesting fight there between advertising and design. And we do both. For a lot of clients, we do everything for him. We’ll do their design foundation, but then we’ll also do ads for them. An interesting challenge is the internal challenge of clients souring on the brand before the public does.
J. Gonzo 20:52
Yeah. Yeah. They want tonspice it up a little or something?
Don Mock 20:57
Yeah. Or we’ll work on something for six to eight months before it gets out to market. Then it’s out to market for six months. And it’s like, Okay, hey, it’s next year’s campaign, it’s time to mix it up. It’s like, whoa, wait a minute, even though I know we’ve been living with it longer, you need to give time to breathe and for consistency.
J. Gonzo 21:10
And feedback, too. See how people, how it actually works. Don’t worry about what the next step is when the first step hasn’t fully had a chance to land.
Don Mock 21:19
Yeah, it hasn’t totally baked yet. It’s still three-quarter baked.
J. Gonzo 21:22
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of hand-holding. I feel again, my discovery process and presentation process, I hope, fosters a lot or garners a lot of trust along the way. So that when we get there, they’re like, Oh, let’s see this. If it does its job or not before we decide to spruce it up. But then you get the occasional lunatic owner of a company who just is like, oh, no, I like to-
Don Mock 21:45
Well, we all have to deal with sacred cows. I mean, to tie back to today’s theme in terms of flexibility and versatility of design, sometimes we are stuck with sacred cows. It’s like, you gotta use blue, or the owner likes this, or we got to do this, or the company’s been in existence for XYZ. The first thing you said was designed in a vacuum on a nice eight and a half by 11, shiny white piece of paper. Very rarely are you designing something for somebody’s-
J. Gonzo 22:11
Almost never. Especially now. And again, we’re living in a world of saturation, messaging saturation. So even if you design this nice, clean ad, it’s going to be stacked with a bunch of other garbage. Or it’s going to be in the visual noise of everybody’s day. So you have to consider the environment it’s going in. Part of the flexibility is that. Maybe there’s a version of this, that lives when we know we’re in complete control. And we can have all the- every little jigsaw Tetris piece fits in perfectly. Then there’s a version that lives when we know we’re in a land of visual noise. We need to create our own room around ourselves Maybe just become a visual break from the noise that’s going on there.
Don Mock 22:11
I totally agree.
J. Gonzo 22:21
But we used to have, I had a client when I’ve really been new to this business, that’s called National Airlines. This is probably getting to pet peeves. So they had a logo, that was the country, an outline of the US with a kind of this little ribbon N through it, originally. Then they took that logo, and they put that logo on the tail of an illustration of a plane.
Don Mock 23:14
Oh, God.
J. Gonzo 23:16
So it was a logo in a logo in a logo. It was a turducken of logo. Then said National Airlines. I’m a big proponent of that, if your a national airlines. We know the country’s involved. We know a plane is involved. We don’t need to show either of those things.
Don Mock 23:28
Yeah. But here we are showing both.
J. Gonzo 23:29
Exactly. And a third N mark that probably should have been their mark. That N that really- it was rainbowy. And they were really big with gays and they didn’t understand why. Because this is 20, probably closer to 30, years ago. And we’re like, well, maybe lean into that. But they had a legacy. It was a airline that had become defunct, that they bought. Their legacy logo was fantastic. It was very 70s, kind of Good Morning America, sun.
Don Mock 23:56
That’s cool. But they didn’t go with that one.
J. Gonzo 23:58
No, the the owner had drawn it on the napkin. But on occasion, we could convince him to pull out Just that N, single color. It was so much cleaner, because it’s the thing people see on the plane. I mean, think of it like that way too. You have that version of, if you’re an airline, there’s the TWA logo that lives on your ticket, but what goes on the on the actual tail of the plane.
Don Mock 24:19
Delivery, right.
J. Gonzo 24:20
Those kinds of considerations. I think the whole point of this is that, if you just create a vertical, or a horizontal logo, that never stacks. You don’t have a stacked version you have an icon for. If it’s just that on everything.
Don Mock 24:34
You’re in trouble.
J. Gonzo 24:34
You do. Every little piece, it just has that little tick of a mark.
Don Mock 24:38
You can’t do that anymore. You won’t physically exist anymore.
J. Gonzo 24:40
You’re gonna become invisible in three seconds, especially if you’re doing like an annual report or something that has a logo over and over and over again.
Don Mock 24:46
Yeah, for sure.
J. Gonzo 24:47
So yeah, you got to figure out a way to kind of break up the monotony of just the same thing in the same place all the time.
Don Mock 24:54
Agreed.
J. Gonzo 24:54
But have some consistency. Consistency with variety, I think, is kind of the the nature of what we do, which sounds contradictory, but actually-
Don Mock 25:02
It makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. All right, this has been super fun. I think we’ve been rockin for a bunch. Will you stay and do another one?
J. Gonzo 25:08
Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it.
Don Mock 25:09
Alright, let’s do another one. In the meantime, everybody can find us online at mocktheagency.com Or check us on the socials @mocktheagency. Gonzo, where can everybody find you?
J. Gonzo 25:18
Right now, I realized that 2023 was my 30th year as a graphic designer. So I’ve started a series of videos about my approach to graphic design.
Don Mock 25:25
Awesome.
J. Gonzo 25:25
Not step by step stuff, but really just theory stuff.
Don Mock 25:27
Yeah.
J. Gonzo 25:28
It’s just YouTube at J. Gonzo. You can find me there.
Don Mock 25:30
Okay, awesome. All right. Thanks, everybody. All right. We’ll catch you next time.
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