let’s talk about the Playstation typeface

People including myself have continually mocked Sony for letting Ken Kutaragi throw a tantrum over how he wanted to have the Spiderman font as the typeface of the PS3 logo even though Sony’s designers told him it was a bad idea. Gone was the cool PS2 and PSP logo and replaced in ugly Spiderman font was the Playstation 3 logo and for that I kind of loathe Kutaragi.

However, I forgive the father of the Playstation (or something) because I know that he didn’t attend school for graphic design and didn’t have Photoshop torrents floating around on the internet so that he could download PS and modify his Myspace picture thus learning graphic design as collateral damage. Either way, in one font change he has almost killed a brand in my eyes as it really does hurt everytime I see the PS3 logo.

In fact, currently our PS3 is covered up by a cute drawing of Clank that my girlfriend made and seeing Clank is much better than Kutaragi’s favorite font.

The old Playstation type face including the PS2 logo typeface was awesome, and I fully expected both of them to transfer to the PS3 and they didn’t but now it seems as if Sony is trying to do some logo revival of some sort to reduce the edge off of the horrendous now virtually unfixable Playstation 3 logo.

Behold the Little BIg Planet box art:

I want you to notice the horrible PS3 logo to the left but also to notice the top logo on the box. I’m talking about the Only On Playstation section at the top and how awesome it looks! Is it the Helvetica Neue combined with the timeless Playstation font that makes me think it’s awesome? Yes, yes indeed. Sony has really hit the mark with that branding and it only makes me wish they would just kill the current PS3 logo and use a new one that utilizes that awesome old school Playstation typeface. Sony if you’re reading this, just know that you shouldn’t care if Kutaragi cries when you kill the Spiderman font. I know that you’ll feel bad when you pull the plug but images like these convince me that you want to run far away from the Spiderman typeface and I’m okay with that.

I think you should.