Having lived in Sydney for 27 of my 28 years, I often find myself comparing it to my now home town of Melbourne. While there are pros and cons for each, Sydney’s new brand identity is a decided runner up.

Image credit.

One theory is that the design is inspired by Sydney’s annual New Years Eve fireworks display. As iconic as the display might be, it’s only on one night a year for around half an hour, obviously it would be silly to brand a city on this single event.

Sydney is an extremely diverse city, in both its surroundings and nationalities of its people, and while I’m sure the design is intended to convey this diversity, I’m just not feeling it.

The monochrome version simply falls flat on its face. While the Melbourne logo design looses a bit of it’s oomph in mono, it’s still obviously reminiscent of Federation Square, the cities cultural and entertainment centre. Sydney’s on the other hand conveys nothing.

I hate so sound like I’m just sticking it to the city I left behind, that isn’t the case at all. But having lived there for 27 years you’d hope that something, anything, about this logo would speak to me. It doesn’t.

What do you think?

Any Sydney-siders out there who are getting this?

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It’s been a good few months now since AOL launched their new brand identity. Gone are the old typeface and web 2.0 arrow, while the new “dynamic backgrounds” can be seen far and wide.

That’s all the designs I’ve seen in practice, judging by the Aol Artists Gallery though it looks like there’s still more on the way.

Here’s more you’ll probably see soon, if you haven’t already.

What do you think?

I can appreciate the idea behind it, but after giving it a few months it’s really not for me. Has the new design grown on you?

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Well, I’ve been had. After Ikeas switch to Verdana as it’s corporate typeface, and seeing the above product shots, I was baffled but ready to believe that Apple too had made the switch.

I’m a here and now kind of guy, and unless there is a big red mark on my planner for an upcoming deadline I’m usually fairly obvious to the date. Having forgotten my own birthday 5 times for example, it took a while for it to click.

April fools!

Curse you idsgn, for your convincing trickery. One of these years I’ll remember the date, maybe…

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We all talk a big game, now it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. With two colours, a visual hint and a cryptic clue can you decipher the brands behind these riddles?

Thanks to VYRE, your aim is beat the 21 questions in a time lower than the rest of us.

How did you go?

19/21 for me, a few tricksters in there…

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If you’ve ever had a drink in your life you’ll no doubt recognize the iconic bottle design of Absolut Vodka. It stands to reason their are plenty of equal, if not better products when browsing the shelves of your local bottle shop, yet even without the label, Absolut stands out from the crowd.

With more label designs that you can poke a stick at, each as different as the next, one might think there would be little unity across the brand. Even with no label at all, they are unmistakable.

What do you think?

I don’t drink vodka, it’s a blank bottle, yet for some reason I want to buy it…

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Every so often a major brand causes a stir within the design community. A new logo design is seeming disliked by all, but despite crushing reviews and predictions of doom, these brands have the power to turn anything into a ubiquitous symbol in time.

It’s easy to look at the before and after of a logo design and not like it, but what about after it’s had a year or two, and a few million dollars, of brand exposure and advertising behind it?

Most notorious in my mind from the last year or two is Pepsi, Wacom and the 2012 London Olympics. Now that they’ve had some time to sink in, has your opinion changed?

Pepsi change their branding so often It’s hard to remember exactly what the last image was. I still don’t know what the Wacom thing is supposed to be, and the less said about the Olympics logo the better.

Have they grown on you?

For me, obviously not. How about you?

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There are a whole lot of colours out there, around 3000 solids if you believe the folks over at Pantone, but what colour is best for your brand?

Hopefully the small amount of insight share here can help you decide. Without going into every possible hue, here is a basic guide on thoughts, feelings and emotions associated with colours.

Violet combines the stability and power of red. It is used to symbolize royalty, luxury, elegance, romance, mystery and magic. Violet is however rarely found in nature compared to the other colours, and can appear artificial at times.

Blue. Stability, loyalty, trust and tranquillity. Interestingly, around 70% of children aged 5 – 15 prefer colours in the violet to blue range over any other, something to keep in mind if your marketing to children.

Green stands for nature, health, wealth, safety and growth. On a less positive note the wrong shade of green can also imply sickness or jealousy.

Yellow. Happiness, light, curiosity, light heartedness and fun. Yellow can be disappear into white however is the first colour seen against black, giving it the potential for great impact, or very little.

Orange is associated with energy, warmth, endurance, enthusiasm and stimulation ( not the sexy kind, we’ll get to that in a minute… ). Orange yields almost the same power as yellow but without the vanishing act when used against white.

Finally red. The meanings of red vary from love, passion, sex ( told you we’d get there ), courage and strength to war, fire, blood, rage and death. A diverse and powerful colour.

Which colour is right for your brand?

Did you make the right choice for your brand? or is a change in order.

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After announcing the change back in April this year, energy and oil provider Statoil have yesterday adopted their new brand identity. The new identity has been received with mixed results. While many give the brand credit for it’s boldness, the final execution has received a bit of criticism.

In ticking off the 5 key features of a good logo, is the mark describable, memorable, effective in black and scalable? Yes. But is it appropriate? Many people seem to think no.

It’s definitely not the typical image that comes to mind when thinking about oil and energy, but that’s the point. After reading Statoils objectives for the design I think the Scandinavian Design Group has done well.

The press release on the design is available here, along with a 10 second advertisement that will advertise the brand. Some key quotes taken from the press release are;

Our new logo, the star, is inspired by the starry skies of the north. It symbolizes our highest aspirations: continued focus on the Norwegian continental shelf, international growth, and active and targeted work to develop effective new energy solutions…

Along the way we carried out thorough research among the world’s 100 largest energy companies. We found most to be quite conservative in their descriptive symbols and communications. We wanted to differentiate ourselves by making a courageous decision. It’s important that we stand out in an international arena and stay faithful to our desire to lead the way…

By choosing the magenta-coloured star as our new symbol, we make explicit our origins and our desire to cross new frontiers on our journey forward. We’re also making a clear statement that the world can still look towards the north to discover future energy solutions…

Along with the included corporate collateral, and images reception areas, building signage, work uniforms and more.

What do you think?

I don’t think anyone would disagree it’s an improvement over the old mark, but I think the new mark stands proud in it’s own right.

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After concerns overs similarities in competitors packaging, cereal/snack giant Kellogg’s is apparently going to the extent of individually branding possibly their cornflakes as a trial run before applying it to more of their products.

We want shoppers to be under absolutely no illusion that Kellogg’s does not make cereal for anyone else…

We’re constantly looking at new ways to reaffirm this and giving our golden flakes of corn an official stamp of approval could be the answer…

We’ve established that it is possible to apply a logo or image onto food, now we need to see if there is a way of repeating it on large quantities of our cereal. We’re looking into it…

The method is apparently by individually using a concentrated beam of list to create a toaster appearance that does not change the flavour of the flakes. All this begs the question, will anyone care?

Admittedly the idea is fascinating, but once the novelty wears off it seems like wasted effort. I can only imagine how many actual corn flakes are made each day, well into the billions presumably.

For the amount of time, effort and money spent implementing this, would you expect there to be a large enough number of people mistakenly eating non-genuine who will come rushing back to Kellogg’s to make it worthwhile? I kind of doubt it.

What do you think?

At the end of the day it’s toasted corn. I might buy a single box just to check them out, but it wouldn’t effect my day to day choices if more brands begin marking their produce.

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In yet another installment from The Dacheboard, David Pache brings us 100 more brands of interest including my personal logo design.

If you’re not familiar with the series (refer parts one and two) David brings us a yet another collection of over 100 brand marks from fellow logo and identity designers. David explains;

In this third collection, I have chosen to focus on up and coming designers and have displayed these with more well known enterprises. By displaying everything in black and white it is interesting to take the different brands down to the same, almost basic, level and then compare them side by side within the criteria of just great design.

Without the use of colour, monochrome allows us to view the identities outside the context of their visual universe and makes it all about the design.

Many thanks to David for including my logo design, a mention from ones peers is always encouraging. As usual here’s a few choice selections, be sure to read the full article for more.

Cicada Design.

Effektive.

Jamie Gregory.

Karl Design.

Liv Ducci Lab.

Don’t forget…

To check out the full article for an inspirational collection of fellow designers brands.

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For a long time the gift market Screaming Rhino has been my favourite brand name. They don’t have a webpage that I can find, and I have no idea what the inspiration behind the name was. It just paints a Roger Rabbit style cartoon rhino in my mind running around hysterically.

I recently found this contender… Duck Fart, perfume eau de cologne ( logo pictured above ).

Clearly aimed at customers with a sense of humour, I use cologne so little that I’ve had the same bottle of Hugo Boss for about 12 years, but I think I’d have to buy this just to see what its like.

Seriously though… choosing a brand name isn’t easy, below are half a dozen mnemonic devices for creating a memorable brand name.

Rhymes
Like a song you can’t get out of your head, rhymes work in much the same way. e.g. Curly Wurly, Mellow Yellow and Lean Cuisine.

Provoking imagery
Our brains love imagery, names which evoke clear images are particularly memorable. e.g. Apple, Blackberry and Fox.

Alliteration
Alliteration is a quite common mnemonic device where each word of the brand name begins with the same sound but does not rhyme. e.g. Coca Cola and Krispy Kreme.

Neologisms
A neologism is a new word created by respelling a existing word(s). Accent on the Future = Accenture, The mathematical term googol = Google, Professionalism + proactivity = Protiviti, and so on.

Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia’s are words that sound like what they stand for. e.g. Bang, clap, crack and snap.

Haplology
Finally Haplology, which requires 3 word brand names and abbreviates the middle word. e.g. Toys ‘R’ Us, Buy ‘N’ Large and Gas ‘N’ Gulp.

So which are your going to use?

Rhyming seems pretty straight forward, perhaps I should have branded myself as Andy Pandy… no, perhaps not.

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While any good logo design must work in black only, many brands use colour extremely effectively to uniquely identify their brand.

While you might not think simply using, in these cases, yellow, blue, pink or orange would make one brand any more memorable than the next, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t recognize the brands from these Comex advertisements.

Do any other brands come to mind?

I’m thinking Coca-Cola red, Cadbury purple, Twitter blue…

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@issue have posted their latest quiz, the know your brand alphabet featuring a letter from 26 brand marks and logotypes. A few of the brands no longer exist so don’t feel bad if you miss a few.

How many did you get?

17 for me, how about you?

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My partner and I have been looking to move to Melbourne for some time now and so I was particularly interested to see my future Cities new image.

The logo was developed by the Australian branch of Landor Associates for just shy of $200,000 and according to CEO Dr Kathy Alexander has the following objectives:

• Consolidation of multiple logos into a single, strong, cutting-edge design
• Better identification of services City of Melbourne is delivering
• Greater brand impact and flexibility
• More cost and time-effective in-house design and brand management

Below are a dozen alternate colour schemes, as well as the final mark which is said to represent the cultural and artistic nature of Melbourne.

The design appears heavily inspired by Melbourne’s Federation Square and while I like the full colour render, I think the message is somewhat lost on the black-only version. Besides that, It’s a great improvement over the old logo.

The “leaf” logo has been in use now for 15 years and was found to be outdated, weak when compared to other national and international city brands and with a score of additional logos leads a somewhat fragmented image.

As a result, Melbourne’s annual design costs are said to be nearly $100,000 and their new unified brand images is set to negate this. Last but not least, is some printed collateral to accompany their new brand image.

What do you think?

As with any large re-brand their is going to be a lot of love / hate going around, but at the least it’s a big improvement in my book.

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Namics is a web design, development & IT company based in Germany. After seeing their new logo design, a near paragraph of text set in Arial, I was unimpressed to say the least. As I read on however, their brand identity took an interest twist.

Created by design firm Heads, Namics’ new branding is “real time corporate identity”, an ever changing mark ranging from a single word to billboard size bodies of copy.

What do you think?

At a glance the logo design alone might seem very dull, overall though I think the execution and especially the idea behind the branding are excellent.

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