Love your Spacing TTC Buttons? Now buy the OFFICIAL ones!!

[interchange42]

Groan. Yet another embarrassing venture for the TTC beyond the normal scope of its day-to-day. If they're going to allow a third party to sell official souvenirs, the TTC needs to employ a recognized design star or panel to vet and approve every single item that carries its brand.

These buttons have a sort of all-the-good-designers-left-the-country look to them. That's not true of course - this city has a wealth of good designers - but you would think the opposite by looking at these buttons. As the TTC is a massively huge organization that represents the largest population concentration in the country, one expects them to have the wherewithal to promote themselves professionally by employing the best design standards available here. Instead, by allowing the sale of third-rate items the TTC brings the whole city down with them. As a public agency, the TTC represents us, so they should represent the best us to the world.

How do these buttons look however? Like they were designed by people who have never taken a design course, and who could not even be described as having been 'self-taught'. They're cluttered and clueless in that they

- lack the TTC font
- include a slogan that nobody uses (Toronto's Underground? That's more associated with the PATH system.)
- mostly have graphics that are not instantly understood as having anything to do with the station named, if the graphics make any sense at all
- are not necessarily colour-coordinated with the station in question
-have too many design elements in total.

Thanks to all involved for the slap-dash amateur-hour promotion! You've all risen to the level of your incompetence, and that level is 'buttons'.

42

 

[Disparishun]

What would be a better way -- no pun intended, just caught that -- for the TTC to do it in the future? Here's one approach:

1. Draft guidelines, preferably by a mixed group of inside & outside people (brand marketers, designers, trademark lawyer, etc).

2. Create a jury -- again, inside and outside people, but maybe more designers and creative types -- to apply said guidelines.

3. Allow anyone to present merchandise to the jury for licensing. Make sure the process is relatively painless and paperwork-light.

4. Allow anyone licensed to sell said merchandise for the term of their license (e.g., I dunno, 3 years).

That's for the future. For the present, given the unarguably poor performance of the exclusive licensee, I wonder how narrowly the contract with that licensee could be interpreted -- in other words, just how exclusive it really can be construed to be.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Well simply put, I think the tender in the future should go to a design firm and let them deal with finding someone to produce their designs. This is completely bypassing the fact that design is involved and going right to a production stage and pray that someone there will 'design' something. Instead of a tender based on numbers, it should be a tender on what will be produced and what it will look like. It shouldn't have been, as this RFP likely was, an auction on who can win the right to slap the TTC logo on merchandise at the highest royalty rate.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

Case in point is this logo (#11) on a clothing item:

It's obviously a stock design they have that is meant really more for a university than a transit provider.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

though to give them SOME credit, here are a few t-shirt designs off their site that looks like there's a little more thought to it, albeit still somewhat poorly designed:

The funny ones are here, where they somehow trademarked the phrase on there, which I'm curious if that's even the case and why it's even necessary as it's never used in an official sense...

 

[299 bloor call control.]

this is how easy it would be to have won that tender:

JUSTIFICATION

Legacy Sportswear submitted the only compliant tender, and therefore the Commission will license its images, trademarks and logos to Legacy for a five-year period. In addition to the revenue return, the Commission may derive value, in terms of raising its profile and bolstering its image, with the availability of TTC-branded clothing and novelty items.

 

[voxpopulicosmicum]

My understanding is that last summer the TTC announced that Legacy's licence is no longer exclusive. Anyone know details or do I have to put in work to buttress that assertion?

How common is the surname "Ferri"? Any relation between Rick Ferri's Vaughan-based company and Vaughan regional councillor Mario Ferri?

While I am generally not supportive of municipal corruption, I prefer it to municipal retardation, and I would feel so much better about Legacy's abysmal TTC products if there were an element of nepotism involved in the tender process.

 

[Disparishun]

this is how easy it would be to have won that tender:

It can only be declared "easy" if it can be shown that the tender was (1) well-publicized, and (2) not prohibitively complex administratively in a way that would have barred all but experts in the matter, and (3) not prohibitively onerous in terms of its conditions in a way that would have prevented all but several (or less) firms from bidding.

 

[Disparishun]

Well simply put, I think the tender in the future should go to a design firm and let them deal with finding someone to produce their designs.

But that still gives a single entity a monopoly over all designs. Only their ideas can get produced. Is that desirable?

Why not design a bid for tenders seeking parties that could act as intermediaries, encouraging and collecting good designs, and bringing them to market?

 

[junctionist]

though to give them SOME credit, here are a few t-shirt designs off their site that looks like there's a little more thought to it, albeit still somewhat poorly designed:

The funny ones are here, where they somehow trademarked the phrase on there, which I'm curious if that's even the case and why it's even necessary as it's never used in an official sense...

I'm not giving them credit, because those shirts merely remind me of these designs, but worse.

 

[299 bloor call control.]

touche. rip off.

 

[voxpopulicosmicum]

I was naive enough to think it couldn't get much worse than the buttons, but wow ... what is the thought process? I imagine it's like that first "research project" in grade 5, when you copied the encyclopedia entry on the subject and then dumbed down the words so you could understand it and it would look less like you copied it from the encyclopedia.

Legacy Sportswear - "Your source for sh!ttily executed plagiarism"