We came. We saw. We Spoke.

Quick hit: If there’s any correlation between the capitalization of a company and its online brand presence, it boils down to: “We can afford to look ugly.” At least that’s the conclusion we drew during a study of websites of the Fortune 100 we conducted while stimulating thought for a new project. The web is awash with sites that showcase design in order to inspire pro and amateur alike, but they never display the inspirational work of/for large multi-nationals, because, well... there isn’t any.

Sorta.

Kudos to those Fortune 100 companies who dare to be different (noted by an asterisk in the list below) and push the rest of us to think harder about what a website should be.

1. Wal-Mart
2. Exxon Mobile
3. Chevron
4. General Motors
5. ConocoPhillips
6. General Electric*
7. Ford*
8. Citigroup
9. Bank of America
10. AT&T
11. Berkshire Hathaway
12. JP Morgan Chase
13. AIG
14. Hewlett-Packard
15. IBM
16. Valero Energy
17. Verizon
18. McKesson
19. Cardinal Health
20. Goldman Sachs*
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Home Depot*
23. Procter & Gamble
24. CVS Caremark
25. United Health Group
26. Kroger
27. Boeing
28. AmerisourceBergen
29. Costco
30. Merrill Lynch
31. Target
32. State Farm*
33. WellPoint
34. Dell
35. Johnson & Johnson
36. Marathon Oil
37. Lehman Brothers &mdash Bankrupt, 2008
38. Wachovia
39. United Technologies
40. Walgreens
41. Wells Fargo
42. Dow Chemical
43. MetLife
44. Microsoft
45. Sears Holdings
46. UPS
47. Pfizer*
48. Lowe’s*
49. Time Warner
50. Caterpillar
51. Medco Health Solutions
52. ADM
53. Fannie Mae
54. Freddie Mac
55. Safeway
56. Sunoco
57. Lockheed Martin
58. Sprint*
59. PepsiCo
60. Intel
61. Altria Group
62. Supervalu
63. Kraft Foods*
64. Allstate
65. Motorola
66. Best Buy
67. Walt Disney*
68. FedEx
69. Ingram Micro
70. Sysco
71. Cisco Systems
72. Johnson Controls*
73. Honeywell International
74. Prudential Financial*
75. American Express
76. Northrop Grumman
77. Hess
78. GMAC
79. Comcast
80. Alcoa
81. DuPont
82. New York Life Insurance
83. Coca Cola
84. News Corporation
85. Aetna
86. TIAA-CREF
87. General Dynamics
88. Tyson Foods
89. HCA
90. Enterprise GP Holdings
91. Macy’s
92. Delphi
93. Travelers
94. Liberty Mutual
95. Hartford Financial Services
96. Abbott Labs
97. Washington Mutual
98. Humana
99. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
100. 3M

Notice anything missing? We made this list in late 2008. It takes time to rework a list of this length in HTML, and we only dust it off on rare occasions. Someday we’ll get around to doing that, but until then, please note that Apple (by far our favorite Fortune 100 site) is now #56 on the 2010 Fortune 100 list after only reappearing the prior year.

So, what do you think? Why are the websites of so many of these companies so embarrassingly bad? *ahem* General Dynamics.

Quick hit: It seems like a trivial thing. Like the difference between pudding and custard. But to a typographer, and most especially Mac users, you might as well be comparing bath tissue to a Boeing.

I’m talking about the use — and, most often, the misuse — of tick marks, primes, acute accents, apostrophes and quote marks. We’ve encountered a rash of misuse lately and would like to set the record (and our fellow craftsmen) straight. Much has been written on the subject. So, rather than add to the noise, we’ve elected to link to two helpful resources:

CreativePro | Typographic Tips: Apostrophes & Quotation Marks

And, this web glyph guide which I’ve had bookmarked for years: Webmonkey | Special Characters Guide

Learn it. Live it. Love it.

Recently, a client of ours sent us a logo they themselves had designed for an internal side project. It was a clean logotype treatment with a couple requisite mnemonic devices to give it some flavor. A worthy effort, but we knew we could make it sing.

“What’s wrong with it?” asked an incredulous marketing head. “There’s nothing wrong with,” we soothed. “But it’s a ‘6’ or ‘7’ on a scale of ‘10,’ and we’d like to make it a true ‘10’ for you.”

“Well, I like the font I picked, so can we stick with that?” she asked.

We recognized the font almost immediately. “Where did you get this?” we fished. “What’s it called?”

“It’s called “Swatch It.” I downloaded it for free.”

Uh oh.

What our well-intentioned benefactress had found was a free font based on the internationally recognized, and beloved-by-many Swatch AG (Swiss Watches) logo. This explained why it was free. The designer himself knew he was entering muddy legal waters. The poorly rendered characters and lack of kerning pairs, hinting, balancing and other niceties that are hallmarks of a professionally produced font further ensconced it amongst the poorer quality, unlicensed, gray market types so often (not always) distributed for nothin’. You get what you pay for.

Now, to be fair to the designer of Swatch It — he’s not making so much as a Swiss franc from this font. It’s clearly a free download, and the albeit limited licensing terms state that it is “Free for personal use.” This should be an obvious red flag to anyone who intends to use this and similar fonts, especially for commercial purposes. But, like software (and a computerized font is a piece of software), the end user licensing agreements (EULA) go largely ignored by most users.

We explained the inherent problems to our client:

• The font is based on an existing, copyrighted logomark. Although some courts might classify the font as a ‘derivative work,’ the buttoned-up (and always punctual) legal counsel at Swatch could easily tie up the font designer and our client on Swiss home turf. We hear Bern is chilly this time of year — brrrrr.
• Using a typeface that is so closely tied to a well-known and recognized company is never a good idea. Unless you’re creating a visual parody, it’s best to steer clear. Be unique.

It took little effort to convince her that we needed to start with a clean slate and develop the logo using a “proper” font. But, the situation did raise some nagging questions for us. Specifically, how does a designer, marketing VP or alpenhorn player learn how to legally purchase, download and use a font? Any font. Are we breaking the law by redesigning our client’s mark using any typeface we choose, even if it was purchased?

Combing through the arcane legalities that surround font design and licensing helped us cobble together some simple rules:

• Always purchase for-sale fonts before using them. Don’t “borrow” fonts and don’t use font preview services to patch together your logo for final use.
• Contact the type foundry and/or designer you purchased and/or (if it’s a free font) downloaded the typeface of your choice from and ask to have them clarify their licensing agreement for you. Explain what it is you want to do with the font, and listen closely to their response. In fact, write their response on a printed copy of their EULA, date it and record who you spoke with. Keep it on file. Stay clear of free fonts for commercial use unless the licensing terms explicitly state they may be used for your intended purpose.
• Don't share or borrow fonts unless the EULA indicates if and how you may do so.
• When crafting a logo or logotype, alter the typeface slightly. Many designers already do this in order to create a unique mark, but this practice has the added benefit of carrying your design through some legal loopholes. Most font licenses allow you to use converted outlines for things like logos. If you don’t wish to alter the characters, set them as you want, kern them, take a screen shot of the final arrangement, then trace the type using your own points and bezier curves. Cumbersome? Yes.

Final word: If someone asks, “Can we get sued for this?” the answer is ALWAYS “maybe.”

“Doveryai, no Proveryai.*”

Does all this reading about fonts make you want to read more about fonts? Us too. Feed your font goat his fill.

*We couldn't find a Swiss proverb with the same sentiment. Cut us some slack, would ya?

I had the pleasure of interviewing a talented and very recent BGSU (my alma mater) design grad. She had the usual assemblage of class assignment work, but it was clean, well-presented, inventive, and had more than the usual care applied to it. It was a solid book. Midway through the interview I asked who she followed (no, not in the Twitter sense) – whose work she admired and emulated. I instinctively knew the answer from the contents of her portfolio, but I was unprepared to hear it aloud: “Margo Chase, David Carson, Rick Valicenti...,” she rattled off. The list went on.

I was dumbstruck.

Twenty years ago, when I was a student, the hottest emerging designers du jour were Margo Chase, David Carson, Rick Valicenti, Rudy Vanderlans, Zuzana Liko, Paula Scher and countless others. And here, twenty years on, was a burgeoning designer repeating names I’d once similarly revered and made part of my own design lexicon. It was then I realized how doomed we are as designers to repeat the past. Each generation of creatives bestows the heroes of their own creative nascency upon the next – imbuing it with the fame and foibles of the design rock stars of yore. Back in the day, my professors had impressed us with the Design Immortals of their youth: Chwast, Glaser, Moscoso, Bass, Dunst, Chermayeff & Geismar, etc. They had reclaimed the work of those who had made the earliest and institutionally-sanctioned impressions on them decades prior. Now, once again, a fresh batch of twenty-somethings are being released into the vocation by well-meaning, but reprising, forty-somethings.

Where does it stop? Should it? Is it possible? What do we gain from insistently recycling our rich and storied visual communications history – each designer latching onto Hollis and Meggs as if he or she discovered them?

Originality is arguably impossible to achieve. Everything we do as a culture is derivative. It takes time to weigh the “sui generis” and importance of the works of others, and it is only through the passage of time that we can give these things their rightful place, and elect to (re)apply them to the zeitgeist. Yes, it’s important for a profession to have a continuum, to be able to draw upon tradition. It’s an effective means of evaluating the progress of any industry’s Darwinism. But if we’re ever to evolve; truly make the impact we believe ourselves capable of making; and sincerely fulfill Paul Rand’s declaration/edict/prophesy, “Design is everything,” then we have to be willing to put the past in its place; reinvent ourselves, our profession and portfolios. And kill our idols.

Special thanks to @endcycle for jogging our memory on the Sonic Youth origins of ‘Kill Your Idols.’