I can't tell if this is a joke of not, but that's perhaps why it's so funny.
Reputable newspapers in the UK carried the story last week of an obscure government agency -- the Office of Government Commerce -- that had spent about $30,000 to redesign its branding, which prominently included a new logo.
It wasn't until the icon had been printed on mousepads and pens that somebody realized what it looked like when rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
Yup.
See, the newspapers quoted a spokesman for OGC saying: "It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters OGC - and it is not inappropriate to an organisation that's looking to have a firm grip on Government spend."
That's why I think it's a joke.
Inane logos have long been a mainstay of branding consultancies that presume to imbue graphics with meanings that the non-initiated should perceive. Images and typefaces are streamlined, updated, refreshed, as if a marketing department could somehow by deft pen and ink change the very substance of the reality experienced by everyone else.
Of course, we react to certain colors differently, and we certainly attach attributes to some of the icons that feature in our lives. But the majority of those attributes come from experience, whether ours or those of whom we trust (or, in the case of social media, utter strangers we've decided to believe implicitly).
Why a government procurement department ever thought it needed branding -- let alone paid money for a new logo -- is itself a funny question. And the thought that the new treatment got all the way to print before somebody realized that it might actually have an explicit meaning...just not the one the bureaucrats intended...begs a better answer than oops.
So I say that either the whole thing is a hoax, or perhaps it was all intentional. A guru quoted in the Telegraph story suggested OGC should be happy with all of the publicity, even if the logo's double-entendre wasn't deliberate.
But what if it were?
Talk about having a firm grip on branding.
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