The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Anime Logos

9:30 PM on 12.12.2010   |   Ben Huber

Some people never notice them. Some people are bothered by them non-stop. Logos are everywhere and part of your life, whether you like it or not. Probably within hand's reach right now are several objects with logos plastered on them: an iPod, a hard drive, a book, or your car keys.

Of course, many anime have logos as well (and they're often very type-focused), and many of them have become fairly iconic over the years. And while some of them are good, possibly even great, many more are terrible abominations of design. After the jump I take you on a little trip by some bad logos, some good ones, and a few awful ones – and of course, I can't help but try to fix them up a little bit along the way.

THE BAD:

The Bleach logo. It's fairly well-known, and has inspired many parodies (although those are probably due more to the popularity of the series, not the logo itself). The original has two outlines around the type, high-contrast blue and red being the focal point, and some duplicated-and-flipped flames coming out of each end. If they weren't blue and white I might've thought they were stolen from a motorcycle helmet.

It's certainly not an ugly logo, but it could stand to use some clean-ups. The few adjustments I suggest are dropping the flames and thick blue background and let the type breathe a bit. You can still keep your gradients, but let's just tone everything down a bit. In the end, the new version becomes more readable from a distance (a good thing for logos, try looking at the thumbnail and seeing which one is easier to read... or just step really far away from your screen) and less tacky at the same time!

First, let's ignore that this isn't an anime.

I hate to do this, but yes, Pluto. I adore this manga, so I criticize the logo out of love.

The original suffered from just plain weird typography. Out of balance, strangely shaped, and generally baffling. I realize what they were trying to go for, but it ended up very wrong. The texture and contrast with the red subtitle were the stronger points, so I kept those in my suggestion.

The "U" is retained, as is the red type. However, it still might be better to go to a plain "U" but I feel that might destroy some of the uniqueness. Separating the letters is vital for its readability, here. The original had overlapping letters that needed those strange white cutouts to make it understandable, so I skipped that entirely. In the end, the changes I made aren't perfect, but they'll go a long way in helping the logo stay readable.

Ah, Naruto.

Take a look at what I changed: only three things! Firstly, I altered the gradient in the type. Instead of each letter having its own gradient passing horizontally, I changed them all to a vertical gradient. That alone made a marked improvement. The second thing I opted to alter was the pink rings in the background. Instead of getting rid of them, I changed their color to a sky blue, which creates a much better contrast as well (as you probably know, blue and orange are opposites, and they're one of the best sets of contrasting colors you can find).

The last thing I did was remove the subtitle. It was unneeded in this situation, and the word "Naruto" is perfectly legible. That turned out pretty well!

THE GOOD:

Hardly any changes here! And, the logo on the right is an official logo as it is (I've seen it used on some merchandise occasionally). All that really needs to happen is a complete changeover to the logo on the right – and even then, the left logo isn't that bad either. It's still surprisingly readable with the bar going through the middle, and only loses its clarity when you start stepping back.

The soul icon in the middle is also great, and if you've read Soul Eater you know that this visual is used a lot in the series, and each character's soul is depicted as one of these floating orbs.

A good logo all around!

Oh my god, NO CHANGES?!

Yes, it's true. Death Note has a great logo, as least as far as manga and anime go. It's a grungy, off-kilter logo that does a good job at evoking the tone of the series itself. It even reads fairly well vertically, which is hard for most titles, but due to the nature of the logo it works!

You'll be pleased to know Bakuman also has an excellent logo, but I won't get into that here.

THE UGLY:

Now, now, before you string me up and hang me, hear me out. I'll explain why.

One, a logo needs to be readable, as I've said perhaps 30 times already. Once you back away from the One Piece logo, about the only thing you can clearly make out is the skull-and-crossbones and Luffy's silhouette, and that's just because it's bright red. Two, the typography is, sadly, an absolute mess. The "E"s and "P" seem to be from the same font, but the "N" and "C" look like totally different weights. Then, with the "O" being dedicated to the skull-and-crossbones, and the "E" becoming an anchor, you're left with a mishmash of seemingly random letters.

Since the skull-and-crossbones is the most important part here, I retained that in my version. And since we already have a reference to Luffy in that (the hat) let's drop the silhouette as well. The bars on the top and bottom weren't helping, so I tossed those as well. The next step was to choose a unifying typeface, which here is Condensed Rockwell Bold. I'm still not sure if it's the best choice, but anything is better than the old type. 

If I had more time, perhaps I'd try to find a way to loop the rope back around the type, or reintroduce the anchor, but for now this is a huge improvement.

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Hate my redesigns? Think I got it right? Still mad I said the One Piece logo sucks? Vent in the comments! Let me know what you think! Who knows, if it's popular, this feature might happen again!