Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users has an interesting essay on the power of logo t-shirts in our culture. We have very emotional attachments to logos, particularly when they happened to be printed on a t-shirt (though, stickers are pretty cool too). This attachment seems to go far beyond rational brand allegiance. Our logos define not just the products we use, but the market tribes we identify with. You don't want to get in the middle of an argument between Ford-logo-wearing and a Chevy-logo-wearing guys, anymore than you want to get between Apple and Microsoft lovers (although…and this is coming from a PC user…Microsoft logo t-shirts don't seem to be nearly as cool). Sierra's fanciful suggestion that we create the culture before we create the product is not such a new idea (remember the Nissan commercial not so long ago that didn't even show the car?), but it should remind us how important design is in the process of creating that culture.
1. "The Power of the Logo T-Shirt" is the topic. I look through t-shirts websites a lot to see what I want to wear. The common trait I found is that people tend to wear t-shirts that say things they don't have the courage to say "out loud". Sometimes t-shirts can be sarcastic. The last one I bought was at http://www.geocities.com/dancenight and the owner is either advertising his own sense of sarcasm or anger. Truth be told, many people will wear a t-shirt regardless of the logo, just because it is comfy and they have it. T-shirts that advertise a cause are nice, like earth day or whatever. T-shirts are like a canvas for free speech.
Posted at 6:12AM on Dec 19th 2005 by soupistasty