The Apprentice’s Terrible Logo Challenges 

I don't want to ever gatekeep creativity or brainstorming, but if there's ever proof that marketing/business people just have a completely wrong approach to design, it's The Apprentice.

3 men with 3 hours is not 9 man-hours when you are collaborating on 1 thing at the same time. It’s logic like that which creates impossible deadlines.

As a retired commercial artist I can honestly say that a logo is one of the most challenging and hardest things to create.

The poop to vomit wave is incredible!

i mean i always expect the logos to be terrible on the apprentice but the zip zap one was just so shocking because she said she studied design??? like how on earth did she study design and then come up with that and she thought it was good… i dont know how they look at the logos they create and seem to always be happy with it, most of the time you dont need to be an artist or designer to understand that they’re bad logos

As a graphic designer myself I do try to give them a bit of leeway on the designs, but good god they're terrible. I used to have a client who would come in to 'polish up' my designs for him and it would always be, "right, now move that bit down there. And make it blue. Now, down a bit more. Bigger." and I'd be getting smaller and smaller in my seat as my design turned to cringe. Love your channel by the way!

That wave one was such an odd mistake but if they’d just made it a generic blue water gradient it wouldn’t have been bad by the apprentice standards at all. Woulda coulda shoulda

ok.... as hilariously bad as these logos are, what is the actual point? obviously if you get someone who have zero clue or education in graphic design, you're going to get shit designs - that is why you hire a graphic designer to do stuff like this. so unless these guys are actually in apprenticeship as graphic designers why is this part of their task or a criteria for judging?

I’m convinced they ask the designers to design poorly. The designers are given enough slack that they could make way better design choices without going against any of the advice of the contestants. Instead they use atrocious looking clipart and never choose colours which compliment each other.

Thing is the candidates are absolutely clueless, but I don't think they get any help from the 'designers'.. Even as bad as some of the things they're requesting are, the designers in some instances seem to be truly terrible in terms of their technical ability. I find myself shouting at the screen, "Why would you do it like that? What's wrong with you?". Example: in the 2024 series, Arctic Crunch (as seen in the vid). For the word 'crunch' the designer decided to freestyle the lettering in a kind of lightning pattern, literally clicking along in Illustrator trying to form the letters. That's just not how any designer with half a brain would EVER do it. You'd at minimum put a font down underneath first to trace over - I mean the candidate's sketch was better 😂 The Apprentice makes designers look like they're just there to take orders and push buttons - it's the worst possible depiction of our industry.

I need a full day of constant communication with the client to create a logo, and that is only if they don't want sudden changes in color or design. I can't imagine 3 hours to do all branding and product design

When I was a graphic designer, designing logos was one of the most stressful things to do. Its genuinely like reinventing the wheel sometimes

As logo designer, you can't rush perfection, it's like trying to build a car from scratch in a day

as ridiculous as they are, the teams are given strict perameters about the colours and names that they are allowed to use which doesnt help

I feel sorry for the actual designers who are hired from agencies to be their 'hand' but not allowed to give advice... their faces are on screen for ever associated with this junk

the turd yoga will forever be embedded in my brain. kudos for a memorable logo

This all really resemble the way America's Next Top Model have challenges that, just like in this video, limits the contestants options or put them in scenarios that simply would not even be a thing in an actual modeling job.

This is why i always say that i will never be in a tv reality show. I'm a designer and illustrator and If someone tells me that i have to create a branding in like 3 hours, without researching or anything, i would simply just say "you want me to do what? Pull it out of my fucking ass??" And leave the show

The apprentice over the last 10 years has just been about hiring airheads to create DRAMA not actually succeed in challenges.

half of the actual logos are not logos, but word marks and some standard shape elements. The cereal logo / mascot of Captain Squawk is very much the same a Dutch mascot for kids cookies, called Kapitein Koek ("Captain Cooky")

As a graphic designer for nearly 16 years, my soul left my body several times in this video... I've never felt so triggered lol. I cannot imagine what those poor designers were feeling while working on those abominations, especially Polar Crunch... Holy hell...

All of those logos were absolutely awful but those judges or mentors or whatever are REACHING with their critiques

I think the anti-venom bottle's shape was amazing and perfect for the target audience. With what people said, it stood out as something different

Zip Zap reminds me of a schoolchild's powerpoint presentation introduction

I feel like they only get 20 minutes to do it, no way it can always be that bad otherwise

This video demonstrates why I haven't watched the last series and a half of The Apprentice... I asked a businessman, on an average day. How many times do you have to run to and from a Chrysler Voyager, in and out of a corner shop in Sutton. To buy a jar of chilli jam? He said "ummmmm. never?" Showing how irrelevant any of the tasks are in The Apprentice...

Wouldn't it be more realistic to simply have them actually work with the designer, and communicate with them, to get the best design? Why does it matter what their own actual design skills are? Still funny though.

if anyone ever wondered what designer's nightmares are about... this is it

those useless gradients hurt my eyes

It'd be cool if a RU-vid graphic designer took the concepts and recreated them professionally!

marketing people really are the least creative breed

My first day as a media student at college, we got shown these logos as things not to do 😭

These deadlines are insane haha no one has a chance.

I often say that the apprentice is just a really bad competition. One moment your doing the product design, pitching the product, developing the product or even some dealing or treasure hunt. Your just not going to find someone who can do all those jobs! This somehow is meant to give us the best person at the end. Heck half of it is luck! Will the other team be slightly better and so you get the pleasure of told off by Lord Sugar at the end!

Just found your channel, it's so great. So much polish to every video! Keep it up dude, you deserve so many subs.

In their defence, it’s established that offscreen they are given parameters with shapes/colours by the production team

My college tutor for logo design told me that a logo must have 2 things : 1. Is it readable - can you look at the logo and understand what it means from a glance. If its on the side of a lorry or van, you need to get this down because it'll drive by and you need to get that part out. 2. Is it Legible - If it has text, can you read it from afar? Same with the van case, if you can't see what it says from afar it fails there. These are the two most important things in logo design. Imo I have a few extra versions of a logo designed before showing it to give you an idea on how it can be used for a business. Eg. a black and white one for documents, one with a primary colour (either 1 - 3) of the logo as a background (to show how it can stand out against the same colour) and one with different colours incase they want to change it and/or reuse it for something else like another department or product. I also like to limit my colours for a logo to 3 at most (excluding monochrome) since any more and it'll look cluttered (tbh 3 is pushing it at times). This was everything I learnt from college and I carried it every since. A lot of these logos fail many if not all of these rules and tests I mentioned.

I remember watching the poop wave episode in class, was an amazing example of what not to do, everyone was ripping it to shreds.

7:50 XD, this is like when the client is making those 'slight improvements' and you can't anything.

💪🏾Much love, all the way from South Africa ❤

Off camera the producers often tell them to include a certain colour theme or logo...so its not always entirely the contestants fault.

Way back when, I got a shitty job offer and part of the interview process was having to do this kind of bollocks.

Poop and vomit wave.. you have to admit! it sums up a cruise perfectly tho XD

7:22 This poor f-ing lad 😂😂😂😂😂

6:49 man, I had that toy as a kid. I had totally forgotten it existed. You had to scan barcodes to look for monsters hidden inside of them. Sadly it was really difficult to find ones but anyway.. they tried something different.

What I never get about it are the orders from companies, like are all these companies going to really buy 4000 of one of these slapped together products even when they aren’t super enthusiastic?

The problem with The Apprentice is that every single contestant is so delusional about their abilities that there is never one of them capable of taking a slight step back and just going "huh... looks shit"

Great vid

The poop wave is just fantastic 😂

They can't communicate with the other team-half digitally. They can't spell-check or change things after leaving the design room. They have a couple hours to come up with name, logo, box graphics etc. I knew it! there had to be rules that intentionally made tasks more prone to mistakes to keep the show being fun cringe-TV

asking none arty business people to do art is a bit like asking a plumber to make a french cheese Soufflé with no recipe and expecting perfection

They're actually restricted on the number of calls allowed between each sub team.

My favourite part about that first logo is that the following week the teams were tasked with producing a children's electric toothbrush, and the boys went with THE SAME COLOUR SCHEME. I know they don't have much time and are basically set up to lose on these tasks, but at the very least if they could make different mistakes, it might show a degree of learning 😂

These always annoyed me, there’s a reason why businesspeople HIRE and work with ENTIRE TEAMS of designers and graphic designers to create marketing material. The whole show is ridiculous and makes them complete so many challenges people like this would never have to actually do when they get the job.

Excellent.

Damn, these business school types really don't be having no "eye for design" huh. I always thought that pretty much anyone can slap together something halfway descent in an hour or two since modern design tools are like trivially easy to use but I guess some things like creative restraint and sense of taste can only come from experience. Still, most of these blunders can definitely be pinned on the whole designer 1-way communication thing. Oh and the producers definitely sat that up that way on purpose!

8:00 This did catch on, but maybe just not that specific product? CD players that could hold multiple CDs were very popular in the 1990s and early 2000s. You could put ten of your favorite CDs in there, put it on shuffle and basically get a huge playlist. And that was before the iPod era.

I have to be honest...production knows what it is doing

no encore?? that was a cold and abrupt ending of a video jaja please, at least some say a few words of goodbye to close the video, it's always needed

"The product was basically a CD player that could hold ten discs instead of one. Unsurprisingly, this never caught on" Cries in 90s 😢

All I learned from this summary of 'The Apprentice' is that everything about it, from the concept, to the execution, to even the potrayal of what businesses actually do to create marketing and branding is completely wrong. Why the f*ck does the show even exist? What you have leftover is pointless drama over fake problems that would never occur in a real life situation! Just cancel the stupid show and make something worth all the money and production effort instead of whatever that was

Got to admit, VENOM would make a good energy drink, tattoo, or band logo if executed well.

As a designer this is a crime, my eyes hurt like wtf 🫥

If you remove the reality TV antics and the stupid rules about not communicating or going back to the graphic designer I think this is such a great insight into what it’s like for designers dealing with clients who have no creativity at all lmao. Like it’s simply the difference between your left and right side of your brain. Some people are wired differently. These guys are great with business and logistical tasks, but just aren’t creative. And that’s fine, as long as you know to leave that part to the creative people it results in two sides with different strengths working in tandem

Big shocker, reality show is specifically organized to generate spectacle lol

I give them slack because we cant expect them to make actual high quality work, but my problem is that it feels so disrespectful to people who have studied and spent years honing their craft to expect people with no skills or experience to make something good. It gives the "anybody can do it" vibe.

First Time Dies - lol - and on the jar it looks even worse.

My biggest gripe with the Apprentice over the last few years is that the scripting on the show has become so utterly obvious to the point that some of the showrunners' decisions are as if they were made by a team of apprentice candidates making a tv show for a task. It's gotten so much worse, every little comment/reaction from the public, every weird 'reaction' cut just reeks of BTEC drama. There is no way that crappy cruise logo was not a plant by the showrunners, I refuse to believe it.

So Lord Sugar created a show that produces a Jack of all Trades, Master of None by the end of it.

You can literally just use a sans serif font with a mix of generic shapes and... boom, you've got basically every tech or well-being company from the past 5 years. This is a clear indicator that its so easy to make a logo that doesn't look awful, yet these people somehow still manage it. Obviously, its not that simple in real business ventures, as you have to remake a logo so many times, but just making one that looks decent isnt that hard!!

you have to be so so careful with gradients

Some of hte stuff they design makes me forget this isn’t a show from the 90s😂😂😂 but their ideas and designs are so dated and bad

Oh, Alana's actual logo looks not that dissimilar to the show's one (minus the cake stand and a font). They kept the words and the colour scheme.

someone make a video on recreating the logos

This really shows the value of designers. It doesnt matter how great the product is or the months of business meetings these people have over marketing a single product. No one will touch it with a 10 foot pole if it doesn't look well designed.

This is torture for designers Why Yt algorithm did this to me 😭

The Apprentice UK is simply an embarrassment all together. At least season one the producers of the show were making some kind of effort. The show found its style and quickly devolved into finding a dozen mid-wits and depriving them of any chance to succeed in a challenge. On top of all of that the show has THE WORST editing in any reality tv show I've ever seen. As an American, i'm a big fan of UK versions of reality TV shows, but this show had degenerated into the worst of the worst formulaic cringe fest and is in no way entertaining. I keep forgetting how bad it is and trying to watch new seasons before giving up. From the very outset of every challenge they will edit everyone talking over each other in a way that that obviously didn't happen, only so they can cut away to Lord Sugar's assistants making a sickened face. Give me the raw footage and let me make a half decent show.

...are these people even trying?

Most of the designs are so bad it’s the funniest part of this show.. is how proud and their egos and then someone telling then’ uhh it looks liek 💩’ lol Even the graphic artist working on it you can tell they’re trying not to laugh LOL

The other one's after this series was boring.

"woman doing yoga get shotgun-ed" 😂

Which episode is this?

I feel I easily can be a graphic designer

if they were perfect, no one would watch it. its entertainment

1:28 they could have just made it.. blue 😂😂😂😂

I HAVE NEVER WATCHED THE APPRENTICE BUT HOLY SHIT FIRST TIME DIES HAHAHHAHAHA

seems like a scripted to get more TRP

These are wanna bes -- worse than a college project lmao

bwahahahahahaha, thanks for the lol

It's simple readable text at the bottom simplified image representing either the product or brand at the top. honestly graphic designers are paid way too much for the amount of boring corporate logos they've ejaculated all over the world

Being "boring" isn't a good philosophy for playing it safe. "Play it simple" can be a million miles away from playing it boring while still erring on the side of caution and safety. The logo can be catchy, clever; with just a few lines or colours can capture and represent the essence of the product being sold. Nearly everywhere in the world, people instantly recognise what "The Golden Arches" represents.

What a terribly f*cking dumb show

07:30 is why I stopped watching the apprentice. The men would be called sexist over the slightest thing and especially by Karen but the women could use sexist terms and insult the men in a gendered way and that was fine. It was empowering.

Is this a scripted show he's talking about?

a country 90% white and more than half the contestents are coloured people...thanks bbc

Imagine if there was an episode where they use ai to do it……. 🫠