Awkward Logos in the Wild

Everyone (or at least, every designer) loves a good “logos gone wrong” selec­tion. Most of them are just unin­ten­tion­ally dirty or besmirched by awk­ward kerning, but they’re always a good reminder of why you should always show your work to others before final­izing, just in case there’s a visual you might be missing. (And turn it upside down, too, just to make sure.)

So, to follow up on last week’s post about design in transit sys­tems, I thought I’d post a little tidbit I came across in Dubrovnik.

I’d just landed in town, ready for a new lan­guage, new cur­rency, and new adven­tures. I’d had about four hours of sleep, stretched out on a bench in the neon-lighted bar of the ferry from Italy to Croatia, and I was wan­dering about, trying to orient myself, with a back­pack the approx­imate size and weight of a bear strapped to my back. I head toward what looks like it might be a cash machine and I come across this delightful sign:

Don’t play with guns, alright, kids?

Okay, so who designed this logo, and what is HVIDR-a? The han­di­capped gun club? A grim warning against playing with guns? An aggressive claim to the juicy parking spots? Doesn’t being in a wheel­chair get you out of conscription?

After a bit of a Google-hunt, turns out it’s the Croa­tian Dis­abled Home­land War Vet­erans Asso­ci­ation, which is an awfully long name for a rather ser­ious organ­iz­a­tion. Civil war is still a fresh wound for coun­tries in the former Yugoslavia—in Dubrovnik, you can still see where shells hit the walls, and you still can’t go off the marked paths in Sara­jevo in case you acci­dent­ally set off a land­mine. (Appar­ently you can also find Sara­jevo Roses on the streets, but I didn’t actu­ally see any while I was there.)

Given all that, I really do sus­pect they could do with a slightly more… tactful logo.

Tags: design, life, logos, travel