I'm really not keen on having to explain design issues unless it's a paying client who needs to understand the work being done for them and how to apply it. But you've questioned my methods and the basic design principles that I adhere to, based perhaps on a few conversations and dealings with other designers. It's pretty clear though that you're going to make your own conclusions and assumptions regardless of what's explained to you. To address what you have both stated and queried:
1. The logo you are looking at is nowhere near complicated by general market standards. Not every logo is a Nike or McDonalds. Do you think the NSW police logo fails to work on a business card? Some designs are simple and often that's best, but in many cases it's not what is required. Simplicity is a goal but sacrificing quality for the points you've raised isn't necessary or worthwhile.
There's a lot of elements on the NSW police logo, but it's still as clear as day in its nature and what it represents because the internal elements are easily interpreted for what they are.
I'm not sure if you consider NRL team logos to be problematic and too complicated but going on your own logic a readily identifiable blue and white football in my design is one that on shape alone and colour scheme must make every NRL club design seem equally as problematic.
So what if you can't see Australia and its coastlines on the football/globe? Your saying it doesn't work with that detail is like saying an outline style map of Australia fails to convey the message or be identifiable because it's missing rivers and borders. Or that the rabbits eye on Souths design makes the piece fall apart when you can only see the rabbit outline. Simple always works, but sometimes it's just not necessary to the extent you prefer.
2. All of the variations which you've looked at are all the same logotype, only with a different tagline. It's not a number of different designs. The colours were simple examples and a few of the many. Mate even if you were to open a copy of photoshop and shrink the designs and then have them printed to the size required for a business card you still won't get a fair representation of how it will print because of the nature of vector graphics based on coordinates as opposed to bitmaps and the way they pixelate.
3. The full colour version you've seen complete with gradients would never appear on a business card, it's for large print and web. The card version would be flat colours only. And hey, I'll tell you now, whilst 1-2 colours is often handy (hence having created roughly 35x2 colour variants among the 40) many logos work with more.
4. Just so you know, that full colour design, when it's printed using flat non gradiated colours it's still would only be 2 colours purchased on top of the black ink; various shades of a specific colour do not count as adding to the cost.
Every element of the design that you've questioned are those that are taken into account with every design I've created since the late 90's. I do welcome the questions and appreciate discussion but the assumptions you've made aren't exactly on target.
