Adobe vs Adude

A while back I stumbled across the observation this simple letter change: Adude. And what with CS4 being so similar to C4S (CAS)… I probably had been up too long.

Branding is bullshit

As a graphic designer who designs logos and moving images, I do not claim to brand. I create visual identity. Hopefully the identity accurately and effectively represents the organization it was created for. It may contribute to the public’s reaction to the organization, but ultimately, it’s simply the packaging of the sensory components of the consumers’ experience.

The idea of defining a brand as a key to business success is a hollow and, I think, futile endeavor. In spite of how you look or behave, public opinion will shape your brand. I believe that to focus on control of an organization’s brand is a waste of time and effort. Focus on quality products, a positive work environment and exemplary service before, during and after the sale. Your brand will be shaped by that.

More at XK9.

RedRam

Having kept my mouth shut for ages about this 'secret project' I was working on at Icebreaker I can now reveal what it was all about. RedRam. Not as premium as Icebreaker but if you love merino this is where you can start…

Junos represents

Back in the motherland the whirlwind that was the 2009 B2B awards is settling down. It’s nice to see that Junos, a project that I branded last year while with Base One, has just won an award. Well done chaps.

Think about the children

OK, it's pretty obvious really, but the people who prove things for a living have proved that “brands leave their mark on children’s brains”.

…participants were quicker to recognise brand names they had encountered from birth… participants aged between 50 and 83 years were quicker to recognise early brands over newer, current brands, even if the early brands were long since defunct… The evidence suggests that mere exposure to brands in childhood will make for more fluent recognition of those brand names in adulthood that will persist through to old age.

So what does this mean? Perhaps think about baby books, logos on bibs, and merchandise broadly if you want the little humans to feel an affinity with your brand later in life. But it is a fine line. They might just outlast you.
Via BPS.

Signs

Naming your url

Smashing Magazine posted a decent little article on strategies for naming your url – especially useful for times when you are convinced that the best names have all been taken. And, while your could take their advice you could also try this (sticker on a wall somewhere in London, made me look, and 3 months later check it out. Don’t fret it is safe for work and can be quite interesting).

Do brands matter in a recession?

Ije Nwokorie, Senior Strategist, Wolff Olins.

Fizzy Shit

I am in two minds as to whether this is a prank to see how many designers rant (as we like to do) but what the hell. Here’s my two cents.
If you are slow on the uptake a leaked brand manual for Pepsi had made its way onto the web. I heard about it form the always interesting Ben Terrett. Holy crap! What a blast. It is well worth downloading yourself and have a read (get it here). See if you can keep that smirk off your face.
Apparently “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations.” It that what drawing circles on top of curvy lines is? I get it. No, wait. It thought it was just doodling. “The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of doodling.” There, that makes more sense.
To compare, what I believe is a weak re-brand that had tried far too hard, to a universal constant like GRAVITY, yup that mysterious force that governs the entire universe, shaping everything, even Hawkins struggles with it, to compare the effect of Pepsi’s new doodle to that of gravity it just fucking insane. Oh well, it got me. Have a read yourself and see what you think. Then tell me if you have an uncontrollable urge to go out and deliberately buy something else just to prove a point. Gravity, you ain’t got control over me, watch me fly.
Don’t even get me started on their new understanding of the golden ratio…

Backwards to the Future

“My feeling was that with globalization, we were all starting to be alike, to dress alike, to use the same products. It was clear that we'd see a resurgence of the local… A chocolate manufacturer told me the other day, ‘We’re successful today for the same reasons we had trouble ten years ago: we’re small, local, have a tiny production, are artisanal and have an old-time image and packaging.”

Not so much a case of Back to the Future, but backwards to the future for sucessful brands according to Portugese emporium owner Caterina Portas. Via BrandChannel

What Paul Rand says goes

I regularly dip into John Gruber’s excellent blog Daring Fireball which often offers tasty nuggets to line my creative stomach, as well as technical wizzardry that confuses the pants off me. This one was a goodie, and I quote:

“The odd saga of Microsoft’s nascent $300 million rebranding campaign brings to mind this nugget of genius from Paul Rand:

“A logo is less important than the product it signifies; what it represents is more important than what it looks like.”

This holds true not just for logo marks specifically, but also in the broader, more abstract sense of brands in general. No brand is better or stronger than the products and experiences it represents. A good brand is strong because it is true, not because it is clever.

I realise I’ve quoted Rand before, but he is that good.

Brand new work

VCT AIM, originally uploaded by smoothfluid.
We’ve been busy working on some fresh new illustrations for the re-brand of venture capital trust company Baronsmead.

I will solve your problem and you will pay me.

There is a very interesting experiment here comparing some of the more popular online logo-t0-order companies, in terms of service, understanding the brief and result. It’s a long read but worth reading through to the end, especially for the final paragraphs:

There’s a brilliant interview from 1993 with former NEXT Chairman, Steve Jobs on working with Paul Rand to design the NEXT identity. Paul Rand was a master of semiotics, and an iconic American identity designer until his death in 1996. Jobs asked Rand if he would come up with a few options. Rand replied, “No. I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me...if you want options, go talk to other people.”