On the evening of July 6, 2017, our local design community came out to rejoice in rejection at AIGA Honolulu’s third NoGo Logo Show.

Honolulu’s first NoGo Logo took place in 2006, when then-president Bernard Uy introduced the concept that had been a popular event in Pittsburgh. The idea was to pull out all those logos that had been presented to clients, but rejected. These are the designs that would have forever dwelled in darkness if not for the NoGo show.

The second NoGo was held a full seven years after the first one. We thought we wouldn’t wait quite that long to do it again.

Logos were entered from across the community. All the entries – over 100 loser logos – were displayed on the vintage, red brick walls of The Manifest in Chinatown. Each attendee was given a sheet of six stickers which could be used to vote. The emojis could be used to represent the general opinion of the voter, but ultimately the winners were those that received the most stickers, regardless of expression. It was difficult to choose only 6 logos upon which to bestow our precious votes. There was careful consideration and passionate debate. Many Rejected [Moscow] Mules© were consumed. We actually ran out of voting stickers and our valiant volunteers set about fashioning some makeshift sets of six for late-comers out of colored masking tape. In the end the dogs had their day – Emily Moody’s Sunshine Canine took first place and scored a Google Home. Dori Leong won the second place Amazon Dot and Scott Daimaru took the third place prize, a Manifest gift card.

A big mahalo goes out to Ikayzo and MVNP for contributing to the prize booty, to Jet Graphics for donating posters, and to JJ Dolan’s for providing lots and lots of pizza.

At the rate we’ve been going, the next NoGo Logo won’t happen until 2021! See all the photos from the 2017 exhibition.