For those not familiar with him, Wayne Gretzky is most famous for playing hockey with the Edmonton Oilers and wore the number 99. I designed this logo on a lark — for a fictitious website featuring Gretzky’s timeless and astute quotations. As much as I would love to have The Great One as a client, we do not. I designed this logo simply after realizing that quotation marks resemble the number 99.

The process started me thinking: what makes a logo a “real” logo? Does it have to be created for a real client to be considered worthy of display or critique? Does it even have to serve a practical purpose?

LogoPond, one of my favorite websites for identity inspiration, has always seen a majority of fictitious logos — and I’m fine with that. It is a place for inspiration, not an exclusive club for those fortunate enough to have a constant stream of client work. Recently, the site has seen an influx of fictitious logos uploaded using quote marks. (See Bull Quotes, Punch Quotes, Tobacco Talk, Quote 9, and Mushroom Quotes.) At Oxide, we use one logo as our fictitious gold standard. Whenever a new concept falls short, we jokingly admit that “it’s no Mustache Quotes“.

The designers of these logos use quote marks creatively, for sure. But in most cases, these logos don’t serve a practical purpose. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t creative or executed well (they usually are). But are they “real” logos? After a lengthy discussion at the office, we landed on this definition: a “real” logo must solve a real problem. I would argue that Gretzky Quotes (and likely all of the examples above) do not qualify because the goal wasn’t defined before design work began. Again, they’re certainly creative, but there wasn’t a problem to be solved until the solution had already been fabricated.

That said, perhaps Mr. Gretzky would encourage all of us to keep designing, no matter what…