Comic Convention logos

[bosrs1]

In April Steve Wozniak, yes that Steve Wozniak from Apple, and Stan Lee announced jointly a new large comic/pop culture/tech convention going into the Bay Area (in San Jose) to replace the displaced WonderCon convention from San Francisco that is now down in the greater LA area (first Anaheim and now apparently LA itself for 2016 and beyond). Among Woz and Lee's different pronouncements about it is the new logo for the convention.

It also comes with a variable and simple wordmark featuring the title and year minus the shading effect on the lightning bolt.

It actually conveys their stated purpose of melding pop culture and technology pretty effectively. But it also got me thinking about the different logos these types of conventions create for themselves.

And they're as varied and interesting as sports logos in many ways. Some like SVCC featuring their overall theme. Others for example like the just completed last weekend biggie being San Diego's Comic-Con International which has had the same logo for going on 20 years or so now featuring just their original stated theme (comics) despite the fact they've grown to encompass pretty much every genre.

[Josh.0]

I love the Silicon Valley Comic Con logo! Very nice.

My Comic Con has tweaked it's logo continuously since they started in 2013. But, I don't mind what they have now ...

But, I really like the logo for the Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Experience ... sharp IMO ...

[bosrs1]

SLCC's logo is nice in the large form for sure with the city skyline (weren't they the ones sued by SDCC for trademark infringement?). And you're right the "Fan Experience" one is sharp. Only thing I find odd is the difference between the two as they aren't much alike. Are they both current?

Another con I've been fond of for years is Dragon Con, formerly Dragon*Con in Atlanta. They recently underwent a logo change from a long time older logo...

to a more modern and streamlined logo.

Then change also coincided with removing the * from their name and followed after the ousting of one of their founders who unfortunately turned out to be a pedophile. I haven't heard it mentioned explicitly but I suspect they were looking for a clean break from their disgraced co-founder. And it was a change for the better as I felt the old logo was a bit cluttered and had a somewhat hand drawn look to it which didn't always fit anymore with the convention having grown and evolved.

[neo_prankster]

In 2012, another convention started up in San Diego, formerly in October, now moved to Presidents Day Weekend for 2016. It is a dramatically smaller convention than the Comic Con every July, but thankfully devoid of the corporate intrusions and ridiculously long lines.

Designed by Scott Shaw!

[pagan696]

our local one...

(shop logo)

[bosrs1]

Here was a con that was near and dear to my heart, being my first big multi-genre con, until of course it was ripped away from the SF Bay Area and I stopped going.

Here was the old logo when it was in the Bay Area. Honestly never understood what the swirl was, and it lacked any kind of location identifier, which actually came in handy as it was originally in Oakland but moved to San Francisco later.

Then Comic-Con International (San Diego Comic Con) bought them and a few years later moved the con to Anaheim under false pretenses. They changed the logo up a bit, replacing the purple, going with a more block font, adding a "presenting" line and adding the city. While the old one was a bit minimalist, the replacement was now a bit cluttered.

The con is moving yet again to LA next year and will presumably simply change out Anaheim for Los Angeles.

[SSmith48]

In April Steve Wozniak, yes that Steve Wozniak from Apple, and Stan Lee announced jointly a new large comic/pop culture/tech convention going into the Bay Area (in San Jose) to replace the displaced WonderCon convention from San Francisco that is now down in the greater LA area (first Anaheim and now apparently LA itself for 2016 and beyond). Among Woz and Lee's different pronouncements about it is the new logo for the convention.

It also comes with a variable and simple wordmark featuring the title and year minus the shading effect on the lightning bolt.

It actually conveys their stated purpose of melding pop culture and technology pretty effectively. But it also got me thinking about the different logos these types of conventions create for themselves.

And they're as varied and interesting as sports logos in many ways. Some like SVCC featuring their overall theme. Others for example like the just completed last weekend biggie being San Diego's Comic-Con International which has had the same logo for going on 20 years or so now featuring just their original stated theme (comics) despite the fact they've grown to encompass pretty much every genre.

Love the identity for the new convention! With the circuit boards representing Silicon Valley, it reminded me of the mountain in Denver's Comic Con logo representing... well... Denver:

It is also a very nice logo!

[bosrs1]

In April Steve Wozniak, yes that Steve Wozniak from Apple, and Stan Lee announced jointly a new large comic/pop culture/tech convention going into the Bay Area (in San Jose) to replace the displaced WonderCon convention from San Francisco that is now down in the greater LA area (first Anaheim and now apparently LA itself for 2016 and beyond). Among Woz and Lee's different pronouncements about it is the new logo for the convention.

It also comes with a variable and simple wordmark featuring the title and year minus the shading effect on the lightning bolt.

It actually conveys their stated purpose of melding pop culture and technology pretty effectively. But it also got me thinking about the different logos these types of conventions create for themselves.

And they're as varied and interesting as sports logos in many ways. Some like SVCC featuring their overall theme. Others for example like the just completed last weekend biggie being San Diego's Comic-Con International which has had the same logo for going on 20 years or so now featuring just their original stated theme (comics) despite the fact they've grown to encompass pretty much every genre.

Love the identity for the new convention! With the circuit boards representing Silicon Valley, it reminded me of the mountain in Denver's Comic Con logo representing... well... Denver:

It is also a very nice logo!

That's pretty clever actually. I like the integration of the mountains into that mask.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the bigger Cons we've all posted so far (other than San Diego Comics Fest) is something like Long Beach Comic Con. Which is frankly a small to smaller mid-sized convention. Their logo however is actually quite good and professional (and very city identifiable if you've ever been to the area near the LB Convention Center or the Long Beach Grand Prix track. Good use of the negative spaces in the "O's" in particular.

That replaced an older and more "comic" logo that emphasized the comic aspect more and the city less...

[wildwing64]

My nearest and most frequently attended is MCM London Comic Con.

Was once named MCM Expo and is still known by that colloquially, although the London was added simply to distinguish it from other MCM events around the country.

Here's the old logo. Much like SDCC it made use of an eye, albeit a more animesque one. I don't remember if there was really that much more focus on anime and manga at the time, but that's mainly what I went there for.

And the current one:

[2001mark]

meh... this is Toronto's

[bosrs1]

meh... this is Toronto's

Hey at least they went with "Expo" instead of Comic Con. SDCC has already sued Salt Lake Comic Con regarding use of the name, and if they win I'm sure they'll be going after anyone else using "Comic Con". And it's a clean logo if nothing else. Now for something completely different. This is some of the logos for one of the earliest conventions I went to less for the programming and more for the social aspects (as it was for many years a great after party each night, BayCon. BayCon is a smaller con in the Bay Area (generally the South Bay). They're different however from everything we've looked at so far in that they don't have a standardized logo, but rather one they change annually to match the con's theme that year. For example here's 3 recent years...

[bosrs1]

Good news for Salt Lake Comic Con

I love the Silicon Valley Comic Con logo! Very nice.

My Comic Con has tweaked it's logo continuously since they started in 2013. But, I don't mind what they have now ...

But, I really like the logo for the Salt Lake Comic Con Fan Experience ... sharp IMO ...

Good news for Salt Lake Comic Con. They were granted a trademark for their name by the USPTO.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=35631125

That should help them in the lawsuit San Diego Comic Con brought against them for using the "comic con" name. For some reason SDCC thinks they have exclusive right to the term.

[Gothamite]

I don't think that helps them much at all. My understanding is that the registration process has a very low bar to meet, and there's no opportunity for others to oppose it. It's only afterwards that other parties can lodge objections.

"We were less surprised by the registration than we were of the organizers' take on it," David Glanzer, a spokesman for the San Diego convention, said in a prepared statement. "As there is no opposition process for a supplemental registration we of course were not able to oppose it, however we are engaging this matter as part of the normal course of protecting our already granted and incontestable trademarks."

[BBTV]

Not sure who designed this logo - that's not even close to the Philadelphia skyline.

[bosrs1]

I don't think that helps them much at all. My understanding is that the registration process has a very low bar to meet, and there's no opportunity for others to oppose it. It's only afterwards that other parties can lodge objections.

"We were less surprised by the registration than we were of the organizers' take on it," David Glanzer, a spokesman for the San Diego convention, said in a prepared statement. "As there is no opposition process for a supplemental registration we of course were not able to oppose it, however we are engaging this matter as part of the normal course of protecting our already granted and incontestable trademarks."

Well regardless SDCC is going to lose. The term Comic Con has become generic, not to mention SDCC never registered the term without the dash. And SDCC waited 40 years to finally trademark their limited dashed version of it, namely Comic-Con... again with no opposition as there was no way to oppose it. This case will be precedent setting, and the precedent will be set that SDCC does not own the term Comic Con.

[DCDuck]

Not sure who designed this logo - that's not even close to the Philadelphia skyline.

Wizard World doesn't really care about being accurate with landmarks and skylines, since there are about 11,346 of them now.

This is my hometown show:

And my previous hometown show:

[Dynasty]

And my previous hometown show:

Not bad, but I would've prefered a landmark logo (something like the inner harbor).

[bosrs1]

This is one of my wife's favorite conventions. She's been trying to get me up to Seattle for years to visit but I'm always either busy or the plane we're on makes an emergency landing half way and we don't get there...

They actually have a couple of variant logos as well where the placement of the straight word-mark and size of the logo itself move around. All are very clean and well done IMO. They also get points in light of the San Diego Comic-Con lawsuit we were discussing earlier for bypassing it by being technically Comicon rather than Comic Con or some variant of that. Harder to be sued in that case by SDCC.