…about nitpicky crap that most people do not care to know about, much less think about. Today’s complaint is regarding the logo of a coffee shop that I go to. The coffee shop is called Fuel, and they’re pretty cool. In no way did I intend that previous sentence to rhyme. I go to this coffee shop fairly often; they make a good cup of coffee, and they recently started serving little homemade single-serving pies that are delicious. They remind me of the individually-wrapped snack pies I had growing up, except that they taste good and have ingredients that come from actual food. But I digress.
The theme of Fuel’s stores (there are at least two, I think) is a sort of retro-gas-station-meets-downtown-cafè-hangout thing, with vintage gas pumps and oil cans neatly arranged on shelves and throughout the seating area. The one I go to has a fantastic brick wall with a sign painted on it (a new sign) made to look like the old billboards that were painted on buildings back before people lost all respect for painted signs.
What I’m getting at is that somebody spent a decent amount of effort crafting a cohesive look for the store, and they cared about the design. Which makes it all the more frustrating that the logo they put on all of their shirts, mugs, posters, and signs looks unfinished. If you’ll refer to the picture, you can see that the sign is modeled after the old gas pumps with the round glass globes on top that displayed the company name. However, unlike said old gas pumps, the dimensional shadow on the U of FUEL does not actually connect like it should (see photo). It just looks like a white U sitting behind a black U, and that somebody forgot to draw the little connecty line that makes it a shadow. I mean, they were obviously pretty inspired by the old Gulf logo (okay, so they kinda ripped it off, but it’s a nice logo that you don’t really get to see anymore, so why not use it?)…but why didn’t they look at the U? FOR GOD’S SAKE, LOOK AT THE UUUUUU! I am tempted to scream that every time I go in, but I don’t, because I don’t want to interrupt the good music and scare the baristas, for they are timid creatures. Fix your logo, people.
Fancy! Looks good from down the street.
Come on.
In closing, here are a couple of logos I found around the Seattle area that I liked. I believe the businesses they come from are both architecture firms. And while the large circular element in the logos makes them a little awkward as far as the space they take up goes, I appreciate their simplicity. Enjoy, and stay tuned for more obsessive complaints about things that no one has probably ever noticed.
