Re: Proper Names - Definition

This is a very strange statement for an artist to make.




Why? Are artists not supposed to be able to understand the concept of a rule? (By the bye, I'm not an artist and I've never described myself as one. I'm not even a designer. I'm a typesetter.)

I thought you agreed with artistic license and the bending of rules for
such a cause.




I don't have a problem with people breaking rules, depending on context. Specifically here, I don't have a problem with people designing logos using lowercase instead of an initial capital ("london", "halfords") or using capitals within a word ("iPod"). But I'm not trying to pretend that one or both of these don't break the rule about correct capitalisation, because they both do.

They are either broken or not, and artistic license therefore involves
breaking rules, not bending them?




In this case, yes.

It could be that I want to but just haven't got the time




That still implies a deliberate decision (ie, not to check the text) on your part.

There's still no capitals involved, and as far as I recall it's only capitals
that can indicate a proper name.




(Only *initial* capitals, according to the norms of English capitalisation.) I was just trying to establish what you thought "some indication that those words are special" could encompass.

Yes, but what's the point? What's the point in making the viewer rely
on context and not using one of the few means of expression that the written
language has over the spoken word?




Simple - for effect. That result might be purely aesthetic or it might rely on some kind of visual pun or it might even have been done just to provoke a reaction. In terms of getting your brand out there and noticed, any or all of these are justified, and they all utilise the difference between the written word and the spoken word - namely, the former's visual nature. We're talking here about logos, not formal essays. If a logo isn't distinctive and memorable, it's not serving its purpose, and (as I've previously noted) the Olympics logo has certainly lodged itself in your brain, so it's worked.

Of course those limits are Richard Archer-Jones's limits.




Okay, so your previous statement was really saying "BUT ..... as I've stated many times, Richard Archer-Jones has set a limitation to bending the rules for art's sake, and *that* is what this thread is supposed to be about." Well, if you just want to pontificate on your view of acceptable design, write a blog. If you post on a public forum, expect to be challenged on your statements and expect the thread to wander.

Here's a couple more questions for you: if someone came to you to do some
work with a predesigned lowercase logo (or with something that transgressed
another of your limits), would you refuse to work on it? And how do you
feel about unicase fonts?