Archive for the ‘Spelling’ Category

Service of Logos that Give the Wrong Message: They Don’t Communicate

Thursday, October 3rd, 2019

Photo: Deirdre Wyeth

You can’t read some logos and others give the wrong message. One awning featured a spelling error. You’d think folks would take better care of these crucial and basic marketing tools.

Deirdre Wyeth posted on Facebook the logo above that advertised a nail and spa salon in her neighborhood. Its name remains a mystery as it’s impossible to decipher the script.

I followed a friend to a restaurant bar on Manhattan’s west side to hear jazz and as I entered, I couldn’t decode its name on the awning in the time it took to slip inside. The orange card–photo right–with its disturbing italic font provides a clearer clue [but is it Sugar or Suggr?].

I felt sorry for the bistro on the upper east side that the windows indicate didn’t make it. I snapped a shot of the awning [photo left] from the bus. The logo for “Le Paris” was OK but the owner of the supposedly French restaurant didn’t know how to spell bistro. Maybe the chef didn’t know how to make French bistro fare any better than the owner knew how to spell a standard French word.

The captions were as funny on the “Bad logos” post on firstwedesigner.com as the logos are faulty. For the dentist’s logo [above right] the author wrote: “That looks like a lot more going on than your regular cleaning if you ask me.” And another logo, for The Detail Doctor, stood out from the many on the website[below]. The caption: “Based on the sketch of this car, seems like this doctor needs a better understanding of the word detail.”

Do you think that poor logos happen when a business owner hires his/her kid, friend or in-law to save money?  Have you seen memorably bad ones?

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Service of Spelling Bees and Videos

Thursday, June 4th, 2015

Two seemingly disparate events taking place at the same time seemed related to me.

The buzz

The winning words were “scherenschnitte” and “nunatak” and the last names of the spelling bee winners, who are13 and 14 years old respectively were Shivashankar and Venkatachalam. My first irrational reaction when I saw the TV news brief was, “Whew! Vanya  Shivashankar and Gokul Venkatachalam have an advantage over many if they have spelled their last names since they were little.” 

The judges called a tie for first place because they ran out of words to give the two students, from Olathe, Texas and Chesterfield, Mo., in the annual Scripps Spelling Bee in which 283 other children competed. Maxwell Tani wrote in Business Insider, on Yahoo Finance: “Loeffler has been EPSN’s go-to television analyst for the bee for a decade.” Paul Loeffler told Tani: “It’s a challenge to comment on the bee because the show is essentially split between hardcore fans and viewers who aren’t very familiar with the whole spelling bee process.” Loeffler himself competed in the contest in 1990 and his sister, who works for Scripps, was a contender three times.

All the news that’s fit to film

While these students competed for the almost $40,000 prize, a copy of Webster’s Dictionary [an example of coals to Newcastle?], and international fame, I heard last Saturday how newspaper editors in the Hudson Valley, like those around the country, are increasingly turning to video to enhance their online coverage and motivate subscribers. [I started to write “motivate readers”–them, too.] The panelists at the Millbrook Free Library, Whitney Joseph, The Millerton News, Jim Langan, Hudson Valley News, Curtis Schmidt, Northern Dutchess News, Stuart Shinske, Poughkeepsie Journal and Rex Smith, Albany Times Union, didn’t argue with someone in the audience who thought that what’s effortless is essential to win customers these days. The panel was part of the annual Millbrook Literary Festival in Dutchess County, N.Y.

Only one person in the room admitted to never reading news on the Internet when the moderator asked for a show of hands.

A high school instructor said he has a dickens of a time getting his charges to write a news story because they seem only to be able to share their opinions. The panelists empathized. Nevertheless Joseph takes on interns at the Millerton News.

Responding to a young man in the 12-15 age range who asked panelists what it took to be a news reporter Smith, from the Albany Times Union, said he looks for a person who is curious and energetic—with the stamina and imagination to run down all leads–and that writing ability is last on his list of priorities. He said he can teach someone to write.

Is there inconsistency in the public’s fervor to watch kids who spell amazingly well—enough to warrant network TV and news coverage—when at the same time video increasingly gathers pride of place over words in  newspaperland?

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