(Logo) galaxy formations

So I’ve written previously about logo proliferation, particularly as an occurrence common to sports. A related phenomenon is that of the logo galaxy.

By this I mean a grouping of several logos, on display together like merit badges, perhaps. You’ll sometimes find a logo galaxy at a small business’ web site, such as this one from computer retailer PowerMax:

Or a business might create a logo galaxy of the brands for which it’s a vendor, as Ace Hardware has done.

One regularly finds similar displays on promotions for large events, with sometimes dozens of sponsors that need to be recognized. Consider this page at the Vancouver Olympics web site. These are some of the trickiest logo galaxies to create because of the need to respect the graphic standards and/or feelings of every sponsor.

If done right, a logo galaxy may not exactly be pretty, but it really can have a kind of dazzling effect (thus my employment of the term “galaxy”)… but it isn’t easy. Squeezing a dozen logos into an often small space, and trying to keep visual weight relatively equal for every logo despite a variety of shapes, levels of details, etc., while keeping letters at a readable size and allowing at least some degree of space between neighbors; this is not for the faint of heart. And then, usually, just when everything is finally in perfect balance, another sponsor commits and one has to find space for another logo.

(Not to mention the whole other challenge of finding logos, which are sometimes supplied only as grainy, low-resolution files, or not supplied at all; any designers reading this have probably gone hunting online for annual report PDFs in hopes of finding a usable vector-format logo.)

Moving on, the Mid-Ohio-Con comic book convention’s web site has an interesting variant, apparently displaying every semi-related logo they could think of in a scrolling parade. Perhaps this is a lenticular logo galaxy.

Perhaps the most interesting type of logo galaxy, though, is that typified by this array of environmentally-related logos used by Chevy:

In this type of logo galaxy, everything fits together harmoniously, or at least it should because everything was created together as a complete set. I designed a set of logos for a client, once, that kind of fit this model; there were common design elements to each and I certainly had the feeling that the client envisioned everything displayed together as a “logo galaxy,” like a chestful of medals. Those logos, however, were still used in isolation at least as often as they appeared together.

This set of logos from Chevy has struck me since its appearance, however, as being the ultimate expression of “logo galaxy envy.” So far as I can tell, the main purpose of most if not all of these logos is simply to create a larger, more sparkly galaxy. I think I’ve seen the Hybrid logo used by itself, now and then, but do any of the others ever appear separately? How much other use do they really even have for the Electric or Fuel Cell logos? (They do appear out of formation on this page — in both cases attached to vehicles that are not currently for sale.)

I just can’t help being a little amused, when I see this campaign. Still more interesting/amusing is the discovery, while looking for examples for this post, of how popular the logo galaxy approach seems to be for boasting of environmental credentials. Just through brief searching, I noted:

• French Paper assembles four logos into a small “green galaxy,” one of which is a design unique to them, so far as I know, and another of which doesn’t even depict any environmentally-related concept, presumably being there simply to round things out.
• Shell has also gathered up four energy-and-environment logos (and placed them into orbit around an image of the Earth, rather awkwardly for my galaxy metaphor).
• BP has an even larger set of logos/icons serving much the same purpose and, like those of Shell, probably all created as a set.

I guess the thinking is that if you want to visually reinforce your claims of being green, the more endorsements the better, even if they’re all actually self-awarded.

Just in case I need a logo galaxy, too, I’ve cobbled one together for good measure: