brandidentity

Freitag launches it’s new Reference Line.

‘Since 1993 Freitag has been manufacturing bags inspired by messengers riding on wheels. Now we turn to those messengers writing on paper. After all, messenger comes from message; and today, the media are the horse that carries him. A new chapter in the Freitag book. The new cover story for the Freitag press. A collection of 14 horse-messenger inspired bags and accessories bags for medialites and urbanites’. - Taken from Freitag

The Dutch public broadcasting organization VPRO (an acronym that translates into "Liberal Protestant Radio Broadcasting Company") started its life in 1926 as a religious radio broadcaster. Over the years it became more liberal and less religious until, in the sixties, it planted itself firmly in the avant-garde by being the first television broadcaster showing a nude woman on national television. Since then the VPRO never left its nonconformist role, with slight stubbornness purposefully choosing those programs, topics and formats that the other broadcasting companies passed over. Although not well known outside of the Netherlands, the VPRO is the real deal. It continuously airs intelligent, cultural and quirky programs, the stuff that makes TV interesting.

So the recent redesign of their 29-year-old logo predictably caused a stir, being one on those projects that every designer in the Netherlands will have an opinion about. Amsterdam based graphic design agency Thonik had the honor and, as far as I am concerned, they did a good job of updating the old logo with a fresh new wordmark.

That the VPRO opted for a visual continuation of the old logo, feels a bit like a missed opportunity however. Their viewers being almost by default an audience that can appreciate ground-breaking new directions. "vpro" is now set in lowercase, but some equity is maintained by keeping the triangle… heck, they even doubled it. The triangles and centers of the "p" and "o" are used to play a formalistic game of shape and color, creating a seemingly unlimited number of possible marks. With inventive use of just these few elements a playful extension of the style is possible.

Show reel with previews on program indents.

I like that the new identity is colorful and vibrant, and has enough "weirdness" to fit with VPRO as a brand. There are some minor points like the circle of the "p" not being the same as the "o," something that is shown in the explanation of the logo, but seems to have been abandoned later.

More pressing is that the idents for the programs (a sneak peak can be seen after 0:24 in the show reel above) do not seem to benefit from the outspoken flatness that works so well for the logo and printed matter. They feel a little too simplistic to do justice to the in-depth and imaginative programming of the VPRO. Although this flatness is somewhat of a statement in a media landscape of flashy, rotating 3d logos, it is not a new one after Max Kisman's iconic, 8-bit like idents for the same broadcaster in the 1990s. That being said, these are sneak peaks so a final judgement might best be saved for the future.

On its own, this new identity definitely passes muster, only question that remains is why the choice was made to update the logo instead of creating something new altogether. If there was ever a client to push the envelope, this would have been the one.

The logo in action on existing program guide covers.

Titles for Dorst, an online youth magazine of VPRO, set in the bespoke typeface created by Bold Monday (sample below).

Images via Fontanel.

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“I had a great idea,” said Tim. “It’s called Landfit. I match people who have gardens that they don’t use with people who don’t have gardens who want to use that space to grow flowers, herbs, and vegetables.”

“If it’s about getting people to use unused spaces, why not grow vegetables in the unused spaces in the logo?” — GOOD PEOPLE

Nice idea, designed by Good People.

More logos using negative space.

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I have to say as an owner of the current Apple TV offering from Apple, I often wondered why it wasn’t more of a success. Well with the launch of the new version earlier today I think this might just change things. 80% smaller, quieter with no fan, and best of all, a lot cheaper. Head on over to Apple to find out more. - Images taken from Apple.

Design studio Stout/Kramer have launched a new website.

It’s Nice That Issue #4 available for pre-order today here.

The lineup is includes interviews with Nick Knight , Neville Brody, Miranda July, Trokia, RBG6, Noma Bar and Bompas & Parr, features by Sara De Bondt, Adam Buxton, Adrian Shaughnessy, Jez Burrows, Mike Lemanski, Peter Nencini and Micah Lidberg as well as tons of work from the likes of Michael Landy, Rui Teneiro, Peter Grundy and more.

Also, very excitingly, every order placed before midnight on September 30th (the day before the official release) will receive a free screenprint by James Jarvis, commissioned especially for the issue. The print will be two colour, with a spot UV gloss, making it that little bit extra special and will come unfolded at 185 x 245mm.

Thanks to Will & Alex for the images and information.

As part of the re-launch of Quipsologies — the hard-working UnderConsideration blog that chronicles the most curious, creative, and notable projects, stories, and events of the graphic design industry — we have made some changes to the Brand New structure. (If you are reading this in your RSS reader join us in the real web, won't you?). I emphasize structure because the content is not changing. I know how passionate you (and I) all are about what gets posted, and we have strived to keep the Feng shui of Brand New as pleasing as possible.

Three-column DesignThe basic aesthetic of the site remains and the width of the content areas has not changed. We just had to tweak some of the layout to make the three-column approach blend together better. We've also taken this opportunity to clean up some of the code, which officially brings us up to standards. Please also do a "hard-refresh" on your browser to reload all the images that might appear out of whack.

QuipsologiesThe main reason for the change is to introduce a feed of identity- and brand-related Quips that are manually filtered from Quipsologies. Over the years we have noticed that some of our most popular content on that site, at least the Quips that generate the most links, was about logos or identities so we are now bringing them here as additional content. They will not interfere with the main content of the site and will not be included in the Brand New RSS feed. It's an added bonus that builds on top of what we already have going. If you wish to follow the Brand New-filtered Quips we do have a separate feed for it here that you can subscribe to.

Job BoardBack in February we introduced our Coroflot-powered job board and we admit that we introduced it a little too aggressively at the time, promising to flood you with announcements of new job openings, and the vocal majority let us know how unpleasant it all sounded. We still believe in the value of the job board and feel like we've found a happy medium: On the right sidebar we will highlight the most relevant jobs as we see them come in. In addition, every first and third Saturday of the month we will post, in the main content area, the aggregate findings of the sidebar highlights. This won't affect the content as we don't post on weekends, so you can happily ignore it as you play frisbee outside or whatever it is you do on the weekends to chill out and on Monday you know you can just skip it. I read nearly a dozen blogs that post job announcements as part of their content and I've never been offended, distracted, or turned off, so I have the feeling that those who are vehemently opposed to this will, in the end, survive.

TagsWe started tagging our posts only a few months ago and some of the trends that arise from it are pretty entertaining — like the amount of posts tagged with "Sans Serif." The sidebar will display the ten most used tags, but you can see all of the tags listed here. At some point we would love to go back and tag all of our posts but don't hold your breath for that to happen soon.

Mailing ListWe are not very active newsletterers or e-mail blasters but we do find it comforting that if we wanted to get in touch with a ton of you we could do it through the mailing list. You can find the subscription form in the right column.

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Some great portraits from the series ‘The Swimmers’ by photographer Kalpesh Lathigra. Represented by DMB Media.

Artwork for Over The Wall’s debut album, ‘Treacherous’, design by Wallzo. Released on the 22nd November 2010 on Motive Sounds.

SECCA Identity in Fast Company

QR National is a soon to be listed public company that owns and operates Australia's largest rail freight network. In a country that is the world's largest exporter of coal, it's not surprising that QR National is also the world's largest transporter of the dirty rocks. In a big brown land, with big brown trains, from the state of the big pineapple, big mango, big bottle of rum and the big boofhead, a big new company is about to be created — with a smart new identity courtesy of Cornwall Design, Melbourne.

Train livery..

The Queensland government has decided to split the publicly owned railroads, selling the freight business by public tender, and retaining ownership of the passenger rail. The first step in this sale process was rebranding the previous QR - QR National as Queensland Rail and, err, QR NATIONAL. It's a big change. But not yet. It's almost a pre-emptive rebrand — before the sale goes ahead and the new owners get the keys to the trains, they're getting a new look — creating the rather ridiculous prospect of the company being rebranded, sold, and rebranded again, in the space of 12 months.

Simplified back into one color, the mark is quite strong, bold and graphic.

There's a common practise when selling your home to give it a "pre sale renovation". You move as much furniture out as possible to make the rooms seem bigger, a fresh, bright coat of paint and do the gardening. Then, on sale day, get some bread roasting in the oven to give the house that "homesy" feel and, lastly, fresh flowers in every room. This rebrand reeks of a pre-sale tart-up, but I must admit, the result is a rather pleasant looking tart.

The semantics of calling something QR, which locates it as based in the state of Queensland, but calling it National, certainly bugs me. On that point, the name is set in the ever dependable Gotham, but probably one of the better uses I've seen — one can't help but like that "Q." Not in black, not in white — but the nice, warm embrace of grey. Personally, I have a particular disdain for grey — it's the color of indecision — but in partnership with the orange, rusty ochre, red and yellow of the symbol — it's an acceptable choice.

Horizontal and stacked logos

On the symbol — hipsters will applaud the subtle integration of the shape de rigéur — triangles — and they've even snuck a couple diamonds in for good measure. A pair of arrows, signifying movement, and also evoking a stylised map of Australia — quite appropriate for a national rail freightc ompany located in Australia. Does this sound familiar? Whilst admittedly different marks, there is indeed a striking list of similarities between this and the Australia Unlimited mark we reviewed earlier. Warm grey sans serif type? Check. Orangey ochre? Check. Map of Australia? Nailed it, but let's make sure to remind everyone we're "on the move," okay? Get some arrows in there!

Moving forward. Or backward. Cool stripes.

It's this sort of orthodoxy that pervades top end corporate identity (particularly in Australia) that I find incredibly annoying — but somehow the precise, crafted nature of this mark, redeems it. In researching this piece I ventured into a dark, dark corner of the internet — forums, Picasa (never Flickr) and YouTube accounts of people who photograph trains — the dreaded Trainspotters. It's not a place I'd recommend for graphic designers — I'd imagine they'll get a particular thrill from the new train livery, which looks very smart indeed. But as a "fresh coat of paint," a "re-arranging the deck chairs," a "change-of-clothes," or however you describe this type of identity re-design, this isn't a bad one at all. As far as pre-sale tart-ups go, this looks to be the most expensive and wide ranging "For Sale" sign I've seen in quite a while.

All images are screen grabs taken from a corporate video here. Requests for images to the designers and QR National were ignored.

Thanks to Luke Martin for the tip.

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It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and as such, I’ve just launched Identity Designed — a showcase and forum for those involved in the design of brand identities.

There are five case studies to read, with plenty more lined-up:

• Believe in
• Wright Brothers
• Miller & Green
• Channel 4
• Offsetters

If you like what you see, subscribe to the RSS feed, or receive updates via email.

If Facebook and Twitter are your preferred spots for updates, here you go:

• on Facebook
• on Twitter

I do hope you enjoy.

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

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An ongoing project by Stockholm Design Lab with identity and packaging for the Ohmine Shuzo, an exclusive sake producer in Southern Japan run by Mr Takeshi Akiyama.

Dan Johnson is a producer and motion artist at Panda Motion. As part of a promotion for Panda Motion’s sister company, Spin My Logo, Dan took two of my past projects and set to work animating the designs.

The results offer a nice accompaniment to the static brandmarks.

Miskeeto

“I made a rippled pulse with varying degrees of opacity. This was then set as the alpha layer to the text in order to reveal it. The wings were made 3d and rotated on the y axis.” — DAN JOHNSON

Giacom

“All the pie wedges were parented to a null object. I applied an expression to the rotation that drives the rotation based on the circumference of the circle.” — DAN JOHNSON

You can see how these animations relate to the static logos here in my portfolio: the Miskeeto portfolio entry, and that for Giacom.

Email subscribers may need to view the short clips on Vimeo.

Spin My Logo Contest 2010

Dan’s offering a free HD logo animation to nine of you. Here’s the info.

Three logos will be chosen each month for the next three months (on September 30th, October 31st, and November 30th). All you have to do to enter is become a fan of Spin My Logo on Facebook, and upload your logo(s) on the wall.*

There are three winning categories each month:

1. Random Win: Anyone can win, and random means random.
2. Staff Pick: The logo that most inspires us.
3. Popular Vote: The logo with the most “likes.” (Votes have to be on the Spin My Logo Facebook page and not on your personal profile in order to count.)

Full contest rules on the Spin My Logo website.

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Branding and identity by Dowling Duncan for Plan Ahead – a semester-long college and career readiness course designed to help students map out and achieve their academic, personal and career goals.

Although not entirely new, portraits by photographer Vee Speers from ‘The Birthday Party’ series. Thanks to Vee for permission on use of the images.

Launched in 1996, Discovery Kids is another popular channel of the Discovery Communications empire with an emphasis on — stating the obvious here — programming for kids focusing on science and nature shows. Beyond its programming, Discovery Kids has also grown into a successful product brand, selling everything from little plastic dinosaurs to night goggles. This merchandising extension is important to note as on October of this year, Discovery Kids, the channel, will be replaced by The Hub, a collaboration between Discovery Communications and toy maker Hasbro. We covered that logo in February. So the new identity, created by Irvine, California-based Mattson Creative, is now a consumer product brand and not just a channel identifier.

Unlike the rest of the Discovery Communications channels, which all have their own unique logos, Discovery Kids has always followed in the footsteps of its grown up Discovery Channel, and this version is no exception. Except that, unlike the last one, this is really well done. Using the same structure as the parent brand and the flagship channel, the Discovery Kids logo does the very simple maneuver of redrawing the globe in chunky-marker-style. Drawing logos as if they were done by kids is an old trick, but they invariably look cloying. This globe rather than following the by-kids-for-kids drawing is by-adults-for-kids, giving it a more professional finish. Probably this is just a long-winded way of saying, I like it. The bold "KIDS" typography is well integrated too. It's big but not too big, it's in the right place and it matches one of the blues in the logo. Simple, obvious things but worth noting as many logos we see here fail to do them.

The simplicity and directness of the logo, though, is lost in the packaging, which reverts to an odd 1990s Nickelodeon look that doesn't have the same kind of sophistication of the logo. Granted a logo doesn't move products, packaging does and, in that regard, this just kind of screams off the shelf. But everything from the halftone screen pattern to the tracked out Cholla screams Been There Done That.

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Founded in 1984 by a small group of surfers in Malibu, California, Surfrider Foundation (SF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to "the protection and enjoyment of the world's oceans, waves and beaches for all people, through conservation, activism, research and education." Through more than sixty local chapters, SF counts with over 50,000 members across the United States. Earlier this month, SF introduced a new logo designed by Los Angeles-based 72andSunny.

Not identity related, but I just love how the chapters dot the coasts. I guess if there was a Pasture Foundation they would have the inverse map.

"We wanted to build from Surfrider's heritage and infuse it with the idea of growth through activism. Both the wordmark and icon swell, becoming bolder over time," said John Boiler, co-founder, 72andSunny.

Surfrider Foundation's new logo maintains many familiar elements from the original mark, including the organization's famous stripped wave, albeit in a more streamlined and contemporary design.— Press Release

This change is like going from surfing in Hawaii to your grandma's tub: All the energy and dynamism the previous icon had has gone awash in the new one. By being confined in a square, the old wave conveyed a sense of the grandiosity a good wave can reach, completely engulfing you. I am sure someone, somewhere had a hard time reproducing the logo on a t-shirt or wetsuit and said they needed to change to something more simple and Nike-like. The new icon is weak not just in its sloppy execution but also in its depiction of a wave. It has no energy or power. The typography is a bit of a cliché but it could have been saved by better execution and a more interesting choice than all the weights of Helvetica Neue — just as one alternative, take different weights and widths of Titling Gothic and go to town or, to ocean, with it. There was no need to change the old logo so drastically; drawing one or two versions of it with less and more spaced lines for small reproduction and replacing that funky italic would have been sufficient.

Thanks to Elizabeth Macdonald for firs tip.

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Harry Pearce has undertaken a series of talks across the globe, including AGIdeas in Australia, Design Indaba, South Africa, Semi Permanent, New Zealand and Design Yatra, India. Speaking engagements have also taken him to New York and Chicago, as well as colleges, museums and the Typographic Circle in the UK. He has now been invited by the D&AD President to deliver the last in the autumn series of President's Lectures on 24 November in London. Having been asked to provide a title and description for this talk Pearce came up with the following; Harry Pearce Pentagram Partner Part-time optimist Failed vegetarian Human rights activist Dream diary keeper Occasional nudist Graphic designer Accidentalist The Schizophrenic Road Part 2: A design journey from a road in west London to a tree in Zanzibar. The lecture takes place at 7pm on Wednesday 24th November at Logan Hall, Institute of Education, Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL and tickets are on sale now. Click here for venue map. Buy tickets The full lecture will be available on the D&AD website for those who cannot make it to London.

Lorenzo Apicella to Judge WAF 2010