Starbucks: What's Past is Prologue
Following my previous post about the new Starbucks logo, I stumbled upon this! lol!
(click to enlarge)
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Starbucks Unveils Its New Logo
Starbucks just unveiled a new logo to commemorate its 40th anniversary.
The name has been removed from the mark and the siren has been taken out of her ring. What do you think?
For a detailed professional opinion and close up, check out this article over at Brand New.
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The Santa Brand Book!
Awesome! I love branding and I love Santa, so you can just imagine how much I'm lovin' this!
The Santa Brand Book by the Quiteroom. Download the pdf here.
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Seed Media Group Branding
Designed by Sagmeister Inc. I just love the way the logo was used on the business cards to create the portraits of the bearers.
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Letterheady
Letterheady is an archive of all kinds of letterheads including the ones of famous people like Einstein and television shows like The Simpsons.
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Tell Brands What You Think Of Them On Brandkarma
Brandkarma is a new website that aims to "help everyone make better brand choices and influence brand behaviour for good"...
Launched as a personal project by Publicis Mojo's Craig Davis, the website feeds in news stories about brands but essentially relies on the input of its users to rate how well brands are performing. Rankings from the perspectives of the customers of the company, employees, suppliers, investors, and of how the brand is performing environmentally are all featured.
These ratings (called 'doos' on the website) are then represented by 'karma flowers', offering a quick visual of what people are saying about each brand (Febreze's karma flower shown top). More detailed comments and news can then be read and shared with others via Facebook and Twitter etc. As users engage with the site they are also rewarded by travelling up a 'doo' ranking system.
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Redesigning Valentine's Day
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Chiquita Banana Redesign
Chiquita's latest ad campaign imbues its audience with an instant sense of wonder. Using playful illustrations on stickers juxtaposed to the iconic Chiquita stickers, the product and brand become more engaging to the consumer—plus they just look cool.
Check out the interview with the Art Director, DJ Neff.
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Kulula Airplane Rebranding
South Africa’s Kulula airlines recently received the rebranding treatment from creative agency Atmosphere when they applied this 101 guide to the various parts of the airplane.
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Yuka Suzuki Business Card
Business card for hairstylist Yuka Suzuki. This one-color card can be customized by inserting hairpins through the die-cut along the top of the illustration.
Designed by: Studio Kudos.
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Personas Online Data Portraits
Aaron Zinman’s Personas searches the internet to create a "data portrait" of your online identity. It basically shows you how the internet sees you. Really cool! Try it out.
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Race for the 2016 Olympics
Two months from now the International Olympic Committee will name the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics. If the decision were based solely on design, which candidate would win?
Click here for more on the topic.
Lebanon: Working On Our Image (as a response to my last post)
While Messrs Aoun, Nasrallah, Franjieh and the fabulously-named Zahle in the Heart bloc are hunkering down for the final showdown over who gets what portfolios, something called the National Brand Perception Index or NBPI has published its findings. Lebanon ranked 174th among 200 countries around the world and – and this part is really disgraceful – 15th among the 19 countries that make up the MENA region. The ranking is supposed to indicate the strength of a country’s brand by monitoring how often it appears in the media, but warns that frequency does not necessarily reflect quality. Ouch! It is probably a dream too far to suppose that one of the priorities of the next government will be to improve on this mediocre placing; a feat made even more mediocre when one considers that much of Lebanon’s brand awareness is negative. A random survey taken in any major capital would probably indicate that people associate Lebanon more with instability, kidnapping, war, Hezbollah and terrorism than its undisputed assets. Wars have a habit of making it onto the front pages with greater ease than the Temple of Jupiter or a bottle of Chateau Musar.
Other, less-smug countries spend hundreds of millions every year in advertising themselves. They sell a dream to encourage investment, to promote key products or simply just to tell people to come and visit. You might argue, especially today when finding a decent table at a restaurant or a place to park is a herculean struggle, that Lebanon has enough visitors, but if the country is to move beyond its role as a playground for Gulf visitors and the diaspora, it needs to evolve.
The country benefitted from 9/11. When smoke cleared from Ground Zero and the US saddled up its horses, downtown Beirut opened for business, conveniently offering Arabs wary of vacationing in Europe and the US an alternative destination, one that spoke their language, didn’t judge their habits and wouldn’t humiliate them at passport control. They came and they spent, and we loved them for it.
But Lebanon has been sitting on its laurels and the world has moved on. This week in London, a 5-star hotel hosted an exhibition of luxury goods – watches, cars, and jewelry and the like – aimed at an Arab market perceived as being unaffected by the recent recession. Unabashed in its ostentation, it was an equally brazen attempt to woo Gulf high-rollers, perceived as the world’s biggest consumers of high-end items. The message was clear. London, at least, was screaming “we want you back.” If the rest of Europe behaves in a similar way, Lebanon will lose some of its luster. And then what?
Lebanon is not geared up for the non-Arab tourist: security perceptions, environmental realities and the lack of an infrastructure for anything more adventurous than a nargelieh will ensure they choose Croatia, Slovenia or any of the obscure Balkan or Baltic nations that have recognized and are selling their potential in the global marketplace.
It’s been said so often it’s become a cliché, but with the right focus Lebanon could be a truly international destination offering a glittering bouquet of attractions in such a small area. So far, all attempts to burnish Lebanon’s reputation have come from the private sector with almost zero government help.
No wonder no one wants the Tourism Ministry.
Article from NowLebanon. Thanks Mohamad!
Paris Tops Ranking in Global City Image and Brand Study
Paris ranks as the top overall city "brand”, followed by Sydney, London, Rome and New York. The top 10 cities from the global survey are:
"The index measures the world’s perception of each city, which influences people’s choices on where to live, work and vacation,” says Simon Anholt, CBI founder. "Particularly in the face of today’s uncertain economic climate, it’s vital to understand the forces and opinions that drive business towards and away from these cities.”
The index is based on a global survey in which respondents from across 20 major developed and developing countries are asked to rate their agreement with statements about each of 50 cities. The ranking is developed by averaging city scores across the index’s six categories: Presence (knowledge of city and perception of its global contribution), Place (cleanliness, aesthetic qualities and climate), Pre-requisites (affordable accommodations and quality of public amenities), People (friendliness, personal encounters and cultural diversity), Pulse (interesting events, activities and lifestyles) and Potential (perception as good place to do business, to find a job and to go to school).
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MTV's Brand New Look
MTV launches a spanky new look – as its international brand refresh rolls out across the company's network of 64 channels, created by MTV's creative directors from around the world in collaboration with UK-based studio Universal Everything.
The word refresh is used rather than rebrand as the MTV logo is still recognisable - the new logo (above) is, in fact, the old logo - but in MTV's new look, the logo remains black on a white ground - no colour, pattern or texture will ever adorn it - which is a change from MTV of old where the idents were based on the logo being played around with.
"Now the logo is sacred," says Roberto Bagatti, Vice President of Creative for MTV Networks International and Creative Director of MTV's World Design Studio in Milan, who oversaw the project.
So if the logo's the same, what's new? MTV Networks International now has a new flexible typographic navigation system for displaying onscreen information. The MTV logo remains in a fixed top left position onscreen at all times and acts as an anchor for the new system of information display - with the title of the current programme always appearing immediately to the right of the logo in a blue progress-bar so viewers can guage where they are in the current programme. To the right of this info is where viewers will occasionally see information in yellow text boxes: yellow denotes what's coming up next on the channel. And to the right of this, appears what's coming up later - always in a pink info box. The typeface used for this primary information is Pharma Bold Condensed by Swiss type foundry Optimo.
As well as the main programme info, more playful messages will appear in the lower third of the screen - and for this text, there is a collection of secondary brand typefaces to choose from, depending on the mood of the message. The eight secondary typefaces were selected for their expressive or emotion-inducing nature - and to add an element of fun to the onscreen identity of the channel.
The faces, shown above, are American Typewriter Light Italic, Balloon Bold, Bigcity Maxi, Cozzap Open, Flash ND, Futura SB Bold Italic, Sahara Bodoni and Signpainter House Brush. Here's an example of how these will be used onscreen:
The first six new channel idents make it clear beyond doubt that MTV is sporting a slick new look - based on an idea of "pop x 1000%" which was, says Bagatti, "the rebrand project's title and mantra."via Creative Review
