Incstone Design

On New Year's Day in 1975, television network NBC replaced their aging logos (the NBC "Laramie" peacock and the NBC "snake") with something a little newer.  Spending somewhere in the ballpark of $750K to $1M dollars, it came up with a design known as the "Block" or "Abstract" N.  Armed with a new and improved logo, the peacock network went on to continue to fight its battles in the Network Wars of the 1970s.

Except....that in May of same year, they were sued by PBS affiliate Nebraska Educational Television (known back then as the Nebraska ETV Network, or NEN) for trademark infringement.  Why?  NBC's logo was identical to NEN's, which had been in use for over two years prior.

The following year, NEN accepted an out-of-court settlement which saw NBC accept ownership of the logo in return for $800K in equipment and an additional $55K in payment to cover NEN's legal fees and create a new logo.  NBC would use the Block N exclusively until 1979, when it was merged with the Laramie Peacock to become the "Proud N", and was ultimately replaced in 1986 with the current peacock logo.

While this tale of the NBC logo might be fascinating on its own and its purpose in television history, it underscores a vitally important issue about logo design: always make sure you get your money's worth.

The first part is important because trusting your logo to someone else can have disasterous results.  Despite the fact that they ultimately ended up with ownership of the Block N, it is quite arguable that having to spend up to $1.8M in 1970s dollars ($6.7M in today's values) for a logo that would be modified four years later and ultimately tossed did not do them any good.  Contrast that to NEN, who paid $75 - that's right, seventy five dollars (aboutr $280 nowadays) - got their money's worth.  Given that information, it's easy to see how finding the right designer paid off the latter, while the lack of same cost the former painfully; NEN's designer obviously had a winning logo, enough so that it was deemed worthly of national recognition (though ultimately in the hands of NBC), was lucrative for NEN and gave them a national spotlight for a while.  On the other hand, NBC's designer, though ultimately finding a winning design, cost them company dearly both in terms of financial settlement and a blow to the corporate ego.

It should be noted that this is not the last time this has happened.  In 2005 software maker Quark ran into the same problem, designing a new logo that potentially infringed on the tradmark of the Scottish Arts Council...as well as several other companies.  Six months later, they unveiled a completely new logo that solved the problem.  Once again, a company's original designer let them down, costing the company both money that could have been spent on other projects and reputation the firm had to work to regain.

We here at Incstone may not come up with a design that will make you money via suing a major corporation for trademark infringement, we promise you that we will come up with an eye-catching, striking design that is sure to enhance your company's profile.  We promise that we'll work with you to ensure that your ideas, combined with our artistic skill, will come up with something that is right for your company.  We promise that you'll get something unique - we do not use clipart or rehashed art,ever, and we do research to ensure that as much as possible your design won't be a mimic of something else already out there.  And we back all this up with our Four-Point Promise.

So try Incstone Design.  We'll give you the best design at a reasonable price.  Who knows...maybe we'll give you something that just might make you as proud as a peacock!