These days everyone has an opinion on design, and a new logo is always liable to come in for some harsh judgement, although not normally be an actual judge. But if you're a law firm and your logo is a red and purple dragon dressed in a business suit, maybe don't use it as a watermark on every page of your court submissions.
Given the "bulldog" reputation of some people in the legal professional, the lawyer Jacob A. Perrone of East Lansing, Michigan, decided to go harder. Drawing on Games of Thrones, he decided to call his firm Dragon Lawyers. To represent how aggressively he would represent his clients, he bought a cartoon dragon logo online for $20 and stamped it all over his court submissions.
But a federal magistrate judge, Ray Kent, was not impressed. When Perrone submited a case for an inmate who accuses Clinton County jail officials of indifference to an illness, all 12 pages were presented with the dragon logo as a watermark.
Judge Kent wrote: “Each page of plaintiff’s complaint appears on an e-filing which is dominated by a large multicolored cartoon dragon dressed in a suit, presumably because she is represented by the law firm of ‘Dragon Lawyers PC Award Winning Lawyers'.
“Use of this dragon cartoon logo is not only distracting, it is juvenile and impertinent. The Court is not a cartoon. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that plaintiff shall not file any other documents with the cartoon dragon or other inappropriate content."
Judge Kent has allowed until 5 May for a new copy of the lawsuit to be filed without the offending logo.
The order prompted some amusement in the legal sector and was even reported by legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy blog under the headline, “Exit the Dragon.” Perrone told Bloomberg's Law360 that wanted his pleadings to stand out but regretted the design decision.
Logo design is a minefield. As a new brand, you want an identity that makes an impression and stands out from the crowd. But you also have to consider who your audience is, and where you're going to apply your design. (we recommend reading our top logo design tips to get started).
For more logo design news, see the new Amazon logo and our piece on the rising trend of anti-design in branding.
