03.04.09
But What Do the Dots Mean?
First, a huge congrats on a job well done to fellow design brethren and friends Aaron Draplin and Chris Glass (for Mode Project) on their recent stimulus logos for President Obama’s administration.
We’ve all seen ‘em and we all love ‘em. That was my gut instinct and admittedly, I’m biased. I love the work these two fellas do.
However, I looked at the TIGER logo again after my first brief look and was immediately puzzled. Design work aside, a language problem popped up.
This is how I read it: “USDOTTIGERDOTDOTGOV.” My first thought is that, okay, I see a snippet of a URL at the bottom. Is the whole thing a URL? Should it then read as:
us.tiger.dot.gov
Or is it:
usdottiger.dot.gov
As Peter Baker mentioned, “They need to get us.tiger.gov redirecting for all us web nerds.”
And later, “My mom reads it as www.usdottigerdotgov.com.”
Is it a matter of too many dots versus periods that sound like DOT?
I’ve since made sense of it, but only after perusing the materials and reading it in context and becoming familiar with the Department of Transportation.
The logo properly should read as “United States Department of Transportation (USDOT). Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER). dot.gov (URL of website).”
However, the quick glance look and context make no real quick sense inviting users unfamiliar with .gov TLD’s to type in a variety of combinations to try to resolve a URL that doesn’t exist. The smaller size of the URL seems to indicate a difference but it’s a very subtle thing. Another option would be to fade or scale the URL colour back to differentiate the title of the movement from the URL for more info.
Like so:
That said, I hope that Aaron and Chris don’t come knocking at my door with rolled-up sleeves and stern looks. The work is beautiful otherwise.
I think it’s all a matter of dots.
