Emdashes. Modern Times Between the Lines.
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule
Before it moved to The New Yorker:
Ask the Librarians archive
About Emdashes | Email us
Features & Columns:
Headline Shooter
On the Spot
Looked Into
Sempé Fi: Cover Art
The BP Logo: Emblem of an Evil Empire
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: BP, environment, graphic design, Greenpeace, logo, Margarit Ralev, mythology, oil, Pollux, Star Wars
Pollux writes:
You’ve seen it in the news a lot recently. You’ve seen it online. It graces the sides of unsafe oil rigs. It’s the BP logo.
The sunburst logo debuted in 2000 in an explosion of green, white, yellow. The logo unveiling was accompanied by mythological references to Helios, the Greek god of the sun (and the father of Phaëton, who irresponsibly set the earth on fire).
Greenpeace rightfully mocked the logo after its debut. Margarit Ralev writes about an incident in which Greenpeace handed out fake copies of the International Herald Tribune at a summit in Brussels.
The newspaper included a satirical BP advertisement that proclaimed: “When we greened our identity, we felt confident that cosmetic changes would be enough.”
Corporate logos are tied to identity, but they reveal nothing about a company beyond the image they wish to project. Cosmetic changes are meaningless without management, structural and safety modifications that would have avoided, for example, the Deepwater Horizon disaster. When dictators come to power, they change flags, coins, country names, and city names, and care much less about improving the lot of their people.
Cosmetic changes are simply easier. It’s much easier to change one’s stationary than it is to reform Station 42872 (“Deepwater Horizon”).
And now the Gulf of Mexico isn’t seeing friendly sunrays of green and yellow, only an ocean of fire, gooey emissions, and dead porpoises. We don’t see sunbursts on the news, only burst pipes.
Star Wars’ evil Galactic Empire also had a logo:
Perhaps it’s time for BP to perform another redesign:
About us
Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
You'd like to know more about the writers and artists and what our column titles mean? We live to serve!
We welcome tips, questions, comments, and corrections, and are always on the lookout for ardent, obsessive new contributors. Click here to email us.
We host occasional book giveaways. Publishers, please email us for our postal address.
Tell me more
Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
Blogroll highlights
- Box Office Boffo
- World of Pollux
- Jonathan Taylor
- Carolita Johnson
- Songs for blogroll lovers (more links)
- Follow us on Twitter
- Befriend us on Facebook
- Get a t-shirt at the Emdashes store
No fear
Everything you tell or send us is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.