🚀 go-pugleaf

One more perspective... 

A large corporation spends many thousands -- perhaps hundreds of thousands -- of dollars in developing its mark (logo or logotype is more correctly a type-only solution). Every possible use (or misuse) of the mark is addressed so that the designer's intent is carried out and the corporate persona is not compromised.  

As part of the project, a corporate handbook -- corporate identification system manual or style manual -- is developed so that whether the mark is to be used internally or by outside vendors, and in no matter what medium, it always is used so that it looks good and presents the appropriate appearance of the mark and of the company -- right down to woven breast pocket patches and the specific colors of the threads and color of the uniforms to be used. From a corporate standpoint, distorted murky fax is a poor and unacceptable way to provide art for the obvious reasons. Sorry if you don't agree -- but too much time and money went into the proper development and determined uses of the mark to allow such garbage to unmine those efforts because the vendor didn't adhere to the standards. If it were within my responsibilities, I would not pay for such misuse of my trademark. 

Establishing identity consistently across the board is one way that recognition of a company is preserved, and that it is presented in a consistent light. This way, you won't go to a McDonald's (for example) and find a golden arches logo on a red shirt over the right breast in one location, and a blue arches logo (or even the wrong golden color) on the sleeve in another -- unless that is part of the accepted choices in the style manual.  

Along the lines of controlling corporate mark usage, the company does not want to have its mark associated with another business or product in such a way as to be misleading, or by its tacit approval, possibly opening up its corporate doors to a lawsuit. It's just one part of an overall corporate image. But the corporate image presented consistently by every document or use of its name is important. 

An example that comes to mind would be an independent garage that services, say, BMWs. They put a BMW logo on their stationery and in their local Pennysaver paper advertisement -- because they fix BMWs and they want the world to know it. Even though the garage does terrific service on BMWs, and uses only genuine BMW parts, and never misleads anyone about their relationship with the manufacturer or official importer, BMW of North America would be well within their rights to say, "Cease and desist!" because some folks out there might think that this garage is somehow a part of BMW of North America, and therefore opening up the possiblity or legal repercussions if something should go wrong with the level of service or, worse, there should be an accident as a result of improper service by this independent garage. 

OK, uniform patches aren't exactly in the same league. But the whole purpose of a mark on a cap, jacket, shirt, or uniform is to tell the world which company the person wearing it is representing on his or her job. a badly represented logo is harmful, as is a dirty uniform. 

Please understand, we're not talking about the marketing of Yankee jackets and caps, or Mickey Mouse shirts. Let's say you have to produce uniform jackets for a security company. And the people ordering the jackets are not authorized to order them and they wish to misrepresent who their security officers really are. Or (more realistically) let's just say that the unofficial art supplied to you is that distorted fax and the result looks like crap. 

That certainly doesn't put the security company's image in its best light. 

Neil