I snapped these pics at the ATM…

…and risked looking like I was casing the place to bring you these giant letters. Can you guess where I bank at? The logo should make it obvious. But just looking at the “S” and the “A” by themselves might not be. I’ve been with this bank for 15 years almost and never really noticed how spacey the lettering is. Maybe just because these were so well lit and right in front of my face that they looked cooler than usual. Again, placement is everything. Earlier today I was thinking the weeds in my lawn don’t get killed for bad design, its where they are at that earns them a death sentence.

Oh creepy, I saw my first Cube yesterday

…Nissan Cube that is. This isn’t a car blog, but it is a design blog. And there’s something very off about these cars. Since you’re usually looking at the ass-end of cars, lets take a look at a couple examples from that perspective. This first pic is straight from Nissan’s Cube site . This is probably the best it will ever look. Nice , glossy, and cleaned up for the site. Does the license read “ASHTRAY”?… Oh no, “ASYMTRY”.

Next up, the street example. This looks more like the car I saw. Not in a showroom or website, its just an odd car on the road. Kinda like a Cylon’s head. See what I mean…

I’m definitely not against playing around a little conceptually but even without the asymmetrical back, this car is just too boxy. So its a fail for me, but Nissan at least tried something new. It does make me wonder when asymmetry works. And as a designer you might want to consider the same.  I did see some concept car pics a few weeks ago that looked awesome, and were very uneven. But maybe the concept part, of a non-driveable car, is artificially hyping the design for me. Click the pics below for article…

Honda Hybrid Logo…cool or crazy?

Just saw this logo for the first time while walking, so I got a nice closeup of it and I think its pretty damn cool.  Up close, it looks just like the pic furthest down with all the fake circuitry. And while trying to find a few versions of this logo, I stumbled onto this site, CarType.com , which describes itself as  ” a museum of automobile typography”, so this could be a good one to bookmark for the next time you’re stuck on a design.