As puzzling as CW's name is, the logo—which looks to us like a vending-machine business card—left many assuming that the logo (if not the name, too) was provisional and would be scrapped by summer. But Gil Schwartz, CBS executive VP for communications, says, "There’s no reason to believe it’s not the logo."
Whether it’s temporary or something that Moonves and Warner Bros. Entertainment chief Barry Meyer, will come to regret in the morning, the logo is the heart of CW’s brand identity.
Legendary designer Milton Glaser knows something about brand identity. What does he think about the logo and what it says about the new network?
"It’s curiously flat," he says. "Uninteresting, unprovocative, unmemorable."
Glaser isn’t eager to trash another designer’s work, but ...
"What’s particularly egregious is, it’s very clunky," he adds. "It’s supposed to be about entertainment, but it looks like it’s for a low-class hardware manufacturer."
It appears to be a product of consensus, he says, and suggests that "they don’t trust the capacity of the audience."
In all fairness, the CW logo is a tough sell next to the Big Three’s iconic symbols, particularly CBS’ own.
"The CBS eye may be the greatest logo ever designed, with the exception of the cross," Glaser says. "It sets a very high standard, and very few have matched it.
"It can’t do anybody any good," he says of the CW logo. "At the same time, it can’t hurt."
Bull’s-eye.
