New EU Organic Products Logo Announced. Love or Hate it?

Some Background

Today saw the unveiling of the new EU organic products logo, chosen from entrants to a design competition.  The competition was open to students from all 27 EU Member States.  Entrants submitted designs to http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/logo/competition/competition_en.htm which were eventually narrowed down to three final designs to be voted for online.

The logo will be introduced to all pre-packed organic products from July 2010 and displaying the logo will be compulsary.  The logo will show consumers that the product has gained a specific quality level to meet EU standards throughout the growing, manufacturing and packaging processes.

The competition was open for two months and received approximately 130,000 votes, the winning design by Dusan Milenkovic, a student from Germany, receiving a huge 63% of all votes.

The other two finalists:

eu2 250x250 New EU Organic Products Logo Announced. Love or Hate it?

eu3 e1265711759795 93x250 New EU Organic Products Logo Announced. Love or Hate it?

My Thoughts

Now, out of the three logos in the shortlist I can see why the winner received the voting majority.  There are clean lines and it’s simple – two great logo traits.  However, there’s something that is just bothering me about this logo, I Just…don’t like it.

Sure it’s a great concept and does manage to represent both the Euro  stars and the leaf but is it really that good?  For a logo to be present on multiple product lines it needs to be extremely scalable.  When this logo is scaled down the stars are unidentifiable, they just look like a series of dots.  The details on the logo is too small in my opinion and that’s not all that bothers me.  I even find myself grimacing at the shape of the stars.  I can see that the designer outlined a leaf shape with stars and then warped them to create the effect but it just looks messy and amateurish.  As if that isn’t enough, the overall shape seems to be a little…wrong.  The leaf happily curves round to the left whilst the middle part that comes from the leaf stem curves round to the right.

Perhaps I’m being unreasonable here and over critical.  Unfortunately I wasn’t aware of this competition until today, and would have liked to see the other entries for comparison but these have now been removed from the competition web site.

So am I being over critical?  I’d be interested to see why this is a deserving logo from those who disagree with me.

5 Responses to “New EU Organic Products Logo Announced. Love or Hate it?”

  1. BlogPost: New EU Organic Products Logo Announced. Love or Hate it? http://victoriaanndesign.net/?p=541

  2. Fiona says:

    At first glance this seems like the clear winner and quite a nice logo. But I totally agree with you; logos have to be scaleable and this just won’t work. I’m not keen on the way the stem appears out of one of the stars either, it seems awkward and in need of more refinement before it can be used in any practical way.
    Fiona´s last blog ..Stunning Landscape Photography My ComLuv Profile

  3. Kelly says:

    I sort of like the cow one the best, it seems the most original, no? You don’t think so? But I hear your point.
    Kelly´s last blog ..Top 5 Posing and Directing Photography Tips My ComLuv Profile

  4. RedKoala says:

    Ok, I thought that’s just me that don’t like it

    I couldn’t find a word for it but thanks to a comment above I finally have it:
    yes, it’s just awkward!

    it’s pretty simple which should be a good thing, but this time simplicity makes it boring and not memorable at all
    RedKoala´s last blog ..Lista kategorii przy użyciu wp_get_archives() My ComLuv Profile

  5. Jo Sturgess says:

    If you want to see some of the other designs, then there’s a Facebook group where some of the entrants have posted their logo designs for comments and feedback.
    http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=85375798276&v=wall&so=90

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