By virtue of the fact that I have both 1) two young boys aged five and under and 2) a bevy of cable channels to choose from, I wind up watching a fair amount of children's programming. Some shows are better than others, and some versions of shows are better than others. For instance, I don't mind Jo-Jo's Circus but want to tear my ears from my head during Dora the Explorer. I also could spend an hour laying out my feelings that Steve was by far the superior host of Blue's Clues. What I had never really considered, though, was the effectiveness of the logos for each show. Thankfully Jason Spector has done so. He's looked at factors like design, emotional effectiveness and accurate representation of the show itself when analyzing the logos. For the sake of fairness he's excluded ones for shows like The Wiggles that contain the characters since they're too straight-forward and can skew things like emotional connection. Go read the whole thing for yourself.
Six shows that I am watching pretty regularly this season
Five other TV shows where Sarah Palin should appear
Brought To You By ... - VIDEOS
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-03-2006 @ 10:07AM
John Howard said...
I can't understand why on earth anyone would want to analyze the logos of kid's TV shows. I doubt the kid's pay much attention to them at all other than to use them to identify the show or characters, and then it doesn't really matter what they look like, so long as they're distinguishiable and around enough during the show for the kids to make the association.
Anyway, I just really wanted to say that Steve was a far, far better host than Joe. It's not even close. I think the most noteable difference to me was when Steve did something like pretend he didn't see a clue, or didn't understand what the kids were telling him when pointing out a clue, you could really believe he didn't know. With Joe, it seemed more like he was just reading the script, without being as convincing. And don't get me started on that Blue's Room crap.
Reply
8-03-2006 @ 12:17PM
Jason Spector said...
Obviously children recognize the characters. That is not in question. But believe me, what the logo (and the rest of the brand) look like is very important.
The shows' parent company(s) and the marketing and design firms they hire want to make sure that their shows are recognized by children and their products are bought by parents. That's why they spend tons of money on market research, quality design, focus groups, etc.
Please try to understand the function of a logo and branding before stating that you "doubt the kids pay much attention to them" and that "it doesn't really matter what they look like." Take a child into a store where the Dora logo and the Higglytown Heroes logo are both on the wall with no character images. Which one do you think they'll recognize first?
Why would a design professional analyze logo designs (and write about it on their blog)? To understand what works and what doesn't - the "Why?".
Why would a marketing professional analyze market research and design trends (and write about it on their blog)? To understand what works and what doesn't - the "Why?".
Thanks.
Reply