To put a bit of perspective on this discussion, the complaints are not about putting "
IDAHO MADE" on the knife, but rather the placement. I completely understand why Chris and Anne want to take pride in the fact that their products are made in Idaho, and commend them for that.
My StarTac is apparently one from the first batch, because it lacks this marking, and also lacks the Wilson Combat logo on the pocket clip, both of which were done in an extraordinarily tasteful fashion. I prefer the Large over the Small, in terms of the Sebenza of any flavor, but the fact that the Star-Benza has these markings done in such a tasteful fashion is prodding me to order one. In other words, the way in which the markings are done on the Star-Benza serves as a selling point. Unfortunately, those on the standard Sebenza 21 are serving to repel customers, mainly due to placement.
In my opinion, the best place to put the "
IDAHO MADE" lettering is on the pocket clip.
As a side note, GAP recently went through a comparable issue when they introduced a new logo. The customer complaints, many of whom are designers themselves, were so strong that GAP very quickly gave up on the new logo, and simply went back to the previous one. (My area of expertise is typography, and the design of logos usually involves typography, which is why I had awareness of GAP's logo issue.)
Also as a side note, there is a reason why people are getting bent out of shape about this issue. Poor typography stands out like a eye sore, but good typography is not noticed. In other words, if we look at this from the point of view of typography, the markings on the StarTac and Star-Benza are done well, but those on the standard Sebenza 21 are done poorly. The following is a paragraph from page 473 of my latest book, entitled "CJKV Information Processing" (Second Edition):
You may have observed, perhaps even at a somewhat subconscious level, that poor typography sticks out and is easily noticed, but that good typography is almost always overlooked and seemingly invisible. In other words, when text is poorly typeset or laid out, the focus of the reader is on the typography, not its content. Furthermore, when text is typeset well, the words are more directly conveyed to the reader, with less interference. Thus, for typographers, and to some extent for the applications that perform typography, the better they do their job, the less their efforts are noticed by those who use the end result of their labors.
