On 17 June, 2010, advised by its identity consultant, Belgium’s postal service De Post renamed itself bpost. That’s right, bpost, not Bpost and not even bPost. In my Review I added the following aside:
“Bpost (and Interbrand) seem to expect us to treat its new name, in text, as bpost rather than Bpost. I don’t believe this is either realistic or desirable. It works well in the wordmark, but wordmarks are best seen as visual rather than verbal. With good reason, proper names in text should be capitalized — and will be, by The New York Times and many others, including Identityworks. Trying to enforce a lower-case ‘b’ ensures only that the name will be inconsistently treated, an identity-weakening condition. But more importantly, ‘bpost’ will forever distract and confuse readers, while trivializing Bpost in stature.”
Having cited The New York Times, I thought I’d better confirm. Here is what Philip B. Corbett, Associate Managing Editor for Standards, has to say:
“Our practice has usually been to avoid rendering company names all lowercase. We think it looks awkward and distracting, and worse yet, is likely to confuse readers who might not realize they’re seeing a proper noun.
“In general, we try to defer to the preferences of companies, organizations and individuals on rendering their names. We accept eccentric capitalization to some degree — eBay, iPad, PepsiCo.
“But there are limits, based on our desire for clarity and consistency and to avoid distracting or ugly typographical jumbles. For instance, we generally avoid uppercasing acronyms of more than four letters, which would jump off the page, especially in headlines — so we write Nascar and Unicef, not NASCAR and UNICEF. We try to avoid fanciful punctuation marks in names — so it’s Yahoo, not Yahoo!.
“And as I said, no all-lowercase names.”
So NASA’s okay, but not NASCAR. This four-letter limit on acronyms is new to me; it makes sense, and we should all appreciate The Times‘ distaste for “ugly typographical jumbles.”
We can all understand a client’s or a consultant’s need to look and feel creatively different. But as users of the name and as readers, we need not accept idiosyncratic capitalization when it burdens us (as I believe it always does). That includes adidas, and smart GMBH. Like all proper names, corporate names should be treated in text with initial cap, period.
By Denis Riney
30 JUL 2010, 23:27 GMT
The most ridiculous is TelePrompTer (I think that’s how they prefer it).
By Scott Lerman
30 JUL 2010, 23:33 GMT
Tony, Bpost and bpost both look weird to me! But Don Ervin always told us it was okay to be a bit irritating (in logo design) as it garners attention. Maybe the same rule applies to names in text. Remember “Monday:” from Wolff Olins? Now that was confusing. Shades of who’s on first. When spoken, it sounded like a disease—”Monday colon.”
By Scott Lerman
30 JUL 2010, 23:52 GMT
…and then there is the lowercase “bp” with the Helios mark and BP capitalized in text. That’s built-in inconsistency.
By Tony Spaeth
30 JUL 2010, 23:58 GMT
Checking back, Scott, I see the 2002 Monday logo had a colon, but to demand a colon in text too would be (I agree) over the top in absurdity. Fortunately Monday: didn’t last much past Tuesday.
By Tony Spaeth
31 JUL 2010, 0:07 GMT
As for bp (logo) versus BP (text), Scott, I’ll defend to the death a designer’s right to lower-case the wordmark but not the name. It’s one of the best ways to say “this is our visual mark, not merely verbal,” while expressing less forman human values.
By Jerry Kuyper
31 JUL 2010, 17:40 GMT
While I assume the bpost name will be readily understood in Belgium, I wonder if the lack of capitalization could lead a German speaker to read bp ost (bp east in English). Not the best of times to begin a name with bp…
Nouns are typically capitalized In German. It would be interesting to hear comments on how the German (or any other country) press handles capitalization of corporate names.
By Lawrence Dudley
31 JUL 2010, 21:07 GMT
We had the exact same dilemma - luckily we spotted it as the press about our relaunch was inconsistent and have since stuck to the properly capitalised version of our name when referring to it in prose.
It’s difficult otherwise - I mean, what do you when you want to start a sentence with the name of the company? It all gets really messy very, very quickly.
By Marco Rezende
01 AUG 2010, 19:31 GMT
A logo is not a word. It is the configuration of a word. The design of this configuration results from an intrinsic strategy, defined by its sender.
On the other hand, in a press text or anything similar, this word should follow language rules, a social strategy. In the Occidental world, proper names distinguish themselves because they are capitalized. If not capitalized they become common words. Not “friendly” words. If “bpost” is a propor name, it should be capitalized. Otherwise it generates a negative “noise” to readers: branding entropy, only.
By Aiden Kenny
05 AUG 2010, 15:49 GMT
Having had to work with at least two clients who also insisted on treating their name in text in all-lowercase – in a misguided effort to be consistent and (ahem) unique – I can add that this simply does not work in practice. In addition to all of the reasons given in the comments above, I would add the sheer amount of corporate time and mental bandwidth consumed by discussing and reviewing the simplest design project and having identical conversations with every new hire on the marketing teams. One marketer would always ask “if the name appears at the beginning of a sentence can we still start it with lowercase?” Another would want to retain the all-lowercase setting in headlines and in titles only. Others would suggest that the name needed to be set in italics or in a heavier weight just to reinstate its role as a proper noun. I would always argue that, over centuries of actual usage, the practice of capitalising proper nouns had become the norm because it clarified the message.
It was an endless ongoing conversation and time-sink that added no value.
By Dan Dimmock
08 AUG 2010, 10:40 GMT
Couldn’t agree with you more, Aiden. Too, capitalising is a simple technique used by writers, the world over, to draw attention and to emphasise. Applying a bold weight to a name is perhaps, a little ‘OTT’. In addition, when writing about your organisation, and its companies or products, the goal is to use, consistent, well written informative copy — respecting writing style as another form of brand expression. Consistency and correctness is so important and a name written in lowercase form is a definite no, no. In trying to establish long-term, two-way dialogue with an audience (particularly in a saturated, competitive market) an organisation with a multipolar, inconsistent tone-of-voice just adds noise. Enter, the importance of good guidelines.
By Guima
21 SEP 2010, 5:48 GMT
In my opinion, logotypes do not fit in grammar issues. Altought it should be readable, it is first a visual statement. I do agree in using capitals when the name of the brand its written down in a sentence habitat, but it also makes me think if there is a non-desired second message when the logotype uses lowercase, as in Paul’s “abc” and “ups”. Visualy we are given two different forms to decode and associate with one single concept. I would like to know what you think.
By angelo sgabellone
20 DEC 2010, 16:47 GMT
This is a silly argument, the Times style book is just that a logo or corporate signature is not. The proper usage is the corporate (control) style not the media or street interpretation. All gramatical positions aside.
By Guima
20 DEC 2010, 21:27 GMT
If the problem is weakness, you can always emphasize the name in bold, italic, quotes, color. As designers we can’t agree in using capital letter as the only way to give strenght to a word in a sentence. Again, how would you write down in a sentence “abc”? Would it be Abc? or ABC? I would rather prefer to have it in bold: abc.
By angelo sgabellone
20 DEC 2010, 21:51 GMT
People its a moot arguement, the fact is the fact, it’s still a corporate signature and not necessarily an acronim and if it were, its shouldn’t be changed any way, nor should the New York Times publishing policy have any effect on the more serious creative/marketing policy of an organization’s image - eBay is eBay and bp is bp and GAP is GAP, not Gap just like USA is not Usa. The first rule of jouranlism and marketing is communication ane legibility followed by gramar and punctuation, not the other way around. Let’s try to remember, gramar was invented by typesetters to enhance ligibiity not comfort for english classes and logos were symbolic extensions of the corporate name plates of organizations.