Va. Tech Shootings: “Anything This Graphic Should Never Have a Logo”

“Last week’s insta-branding” of the Virginia Tech massacre “was out of control,” particularly at CNN, Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco writes.

Example: “During ‘Anderson Cooper 360’ on Tuesday night… CNN’s animated MASSACRE AT VIRGINIA TECH logo throbbed and twirled with all the subtlety of an ‘American Idol’ bumper. MASSACRE was in a stark typewriter font (a transparent attempt, of course, at evoking the gravitas of gritty old-school journalism) in white against a blood-red background, with AT VIRGINIA TECH in black typewriter type just below it. A gaudy, twitchy animation effect caused the MASSACRE type to briefly explode outside of its red box, as did the AT VIRGINA TECH type a moment later. It took me a couple of rewind passes on my DVR to realize that the grainy gray background behind the twitching type showed a gun sight’s crosshairs floating in slow motion across the screen.”

There’s more…