Week One/ Mercer

I decided to use the Banana Republic type because I found a shopping bag from the store in my room today. I have always liked the typeface for this retailer's wordmark and it sticks out to me as a very classy and easily-recognizable one.

After doing a brief search on Google, it seems that the logo uses the font named Goldenbook. This font has very minimal serifs and when you're not very close to the wordmark, one could even say that the serifs are not noticeable. Both words are relatively long (six and eight letters) and the font gives a sleek, long appearance to the words.

The font isn't trendy or a novelty font so it shows a level of classiness for the company. Gap and Old Navy are also affiliated with Banana Republic. Those two retailers use very simple fonts as well, but the Banana Republic font is the sleekest one in my mind. Since the words go on a rather long horizontal line with thin letters (in all caps) it just looks very clean and sleek. If I were new to the store I would enter with an expectation of classiness based upon this sleek font.

I think that the Overtime Sportswear uses a terrible logo. The company is clearly trying to be clever by using a standing athlete instead of an 'I' but when I read this, I see: "Overt Me" instead of "Overtime." That is a terrible mistake to make when designing a wordmark. In fact I think you can't make a worse mistake for your company- if people aren't reading the name right you won't get any customers, that's for sure. I think that the red font and the blue font don't quite match each other-- in fact the font for 'sportswear' seems too sleek and clean for the company. I do however like the use of all caps and the fact that the word 'overtime' is in red bold- it really emphasizes the name (for those of us who read it correctly).