I once heard that the Tracy Morgan / Bruce Wills movie “Cop Out” was originally going to be released with the title “A Couple of Dicks”. I would have seen that movie. The title was changed since it was thought that the term “Dick” used to reference a detective was too antiquated for movie audiences to relate to. I still wonder if that movie would have done any better with that title… maybe not.
I also wonder about the countless number of projects I have done over the years and wonder if the company or product would have done as well with some of the original ideas I first presented to the client or agency I was working for. I have been fortunate enough as a logo designer to have the majority of my work published with what I had in mind, but I am well aware of how many designers out there have tried to push the creativity and imagination of their clients only to have the “lesser” design chosen.
In my portfolio, I always try to show a sampling of what the client had to choose from. It gives the viewer an idea of my thought process and also gives them some idea of what the clients taste level was like. I always cite the example of the Levitra logo in my portfolio. Levitra was the only time in my career in which I was asked to place a phallic symbol in a logo. Most of the time clients see them where they don’t exist. But it was different with Levitra. The problem was that if it looked too much like one, the logo itself made a claim, and with a claim in the pharma world this meant the logo always had to be printed with fair balance – the page or so legal copy following every drug ad in a magazine. So the trick was to make the phallus look more like a flame and less like an erection. Thus the Levitra flame was born.
Id’ like to see some or your unpublished work. If you have a story of a unpublished project, send it my way.
Showing you a couple of dicks. The Levitra logo is a bit more perverted than you probably originally thought. It was the only project that I was asked to place a phallic symbol.
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