Portland Winterhawks Debut A Superb New Logo

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As is being reported by various news outlets, such as KGW, here, Portland's WHL hockey franchise, the Winterhawks, are updating their logo and entire graphic identity system.

It's a timely change. I doubt it's escaped the notice of anyone likely to read this blog, but the growing awareness of cultural appropriation and what it means in today's society is an issue that we must meet in some way. The professional sports world, which has in the past helped itself fairly readily to cultural symbols from, in a great amount, indigenous First Nations cultures, has met it in a variety of ways ranging from embracing the change to obstinately resisting it. 

The Winterhawks' now-former logo is problematic for at least two reasons: the image itself being a First Nations warrior, and the method of original adoption - back in tthhe 1970s, the team originally had to scrounge for uniforms, and some surplus Chicago Blackhawks uniforms were available, and the team apparently just rolled with the design.

The logo and identity redesign released today meets the challenge of sports team identity in the modern age where casual cultural appropriation is an issue rather admirably, I think. The new main logo ...

.... divorces itself from the old in a way that is positive and aspriational, really. The head of a red-tail hawk, colored white to reflect snow and ice, the detail in the head feathers acknolwedging the past in a positive manner, the stylized mountain, even the artful concealing of the letters W and H in the mountain's detail. There is much to like about this logo, and a perfect time for its introduction to have a positive impact.

There is more to the identity system than this; a whole range of wordmark and palette design changes that are throrough and thoughtful. It's most impresssive, and can be seen via a link to a Scribd file at the KGW story which I've linked here: https://www.kgw.com/article/sports/hockey/winterhawks/portland-winterhawks-replace-native-american-logo-mascot-unveil-new-logo/283-a2266c1c-671e-4a6e-89bc-05892b0f6af6

In Which I Design A Logo For A Candidate That Could Win An Election

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I did this some weeks ago, and I can't understand why I didn't boast about it. The client seems pretty happy with it.

First a word about Metro. We have this regional government here in greater Portland and it's simply called Metro. It's a unique thing, something no other collection of governments do anywhere else in the United States. There are still cities and counties (an armful of the former and three of the latter) in this area of Oregon and they operate independently of Metro but they also operate interdependently with Metro. Metro, as summed up by Wikipedia, does this:

Metro is the regional government for the Oregon portion of the Portland metropolitan area. It is the only directly elected regional government and metropolitan planning organization in the United States. Metro is responsible for managing the Portland region's solid waste system, coordinating the growth of the cities in the region, managing a regional parks and natural areas system, and overseeing the Oregon Zoo, Oregon Convention Center, Portland's Centers for the Arts, and the Portland Expo Center. It also administers the Regional Illegal Dumping Patrol or RID Patrol which is tasked with cleaning up illegal dumping and it is the designated point of contact for citizens to report illegal dumping in the Portland metro area.

So, Metro provides some of the common bones for what is a colony creature made of of three very large Oregon counties who have their own ideas about how to go and grow. Crazily, it works, but that's the way we Oregonians tend to look at things.

A good friend is involved with the campaign of a man running for the Metro commission, district 3, which is an area which encompasses a large swath of the southwest metro: cities like Wilsonville, Tigard, Tualatin, a big part of Beaverton, and the areas both incorporated and unincorporated adjacent to them. This candidate is Gerritt Rosenthal, and my brief was as kind as it was loose; I was provided with kind of a virtual vision board, a collection of files of some already-extant ideas, background designs and such. they provided a sense of color and style and allowed me to home in on a key design element and a palette to use.

This was the design I developed:

 

The tree was the key element and it brought the heart of everything I saw in the various files together. The palette drew on all the cool blues and greens I saw, and the type went for a solid yet friendly feel. How I settled on letting the tree come up through the G, I couldn't tell you; I thought the two should entwine and just went with the idea. It come out divinely, I thought.

Application used was Inkscape with some support from GIMP. It was rather fun. And should Gerritt win ... and Willamette Week has endorsed him so he has a chance ... at least I'd have the pride of being able to say I contributed a bit.

In Which We Recreate The Colossus/Guardian Sticker As A Vector Drawing

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Just very recently I had another absolutely satisfying interaction with the people at Living Computers in Seattle, who wanted to use the Colossus/Guardian 2020 campaign sticker design for stickers meant to be sold in the gift shop.

This is always a good thing. I really adore the LC people, who are some of the most straight-up ethical people you'll encounter when it comes to creatives.

The original design was a quick one-off done in JPG format in Adobe Photoshop CS4. They wanted to release a limited edition sticker in a bigger size, and more durable - appropriate for a car's bumper, for example. But the trouble with the pixel image is ... well, I'll be everyone reading this knows. You size up, and the jagged edges show. So, a vector version was called for.

Break out the old Illustrator CS4 and hit the old iMac.

Was it fun? Yes, it was fun. Also, since I'd gotten to see Colossus: The Forbin Project a couple-three times since, I'd noticed that the Guardian logo, which I'd recreated from memory, was a bit 'off'; the starbucks on the red star were a bit squat, which gave room for a larger capital G letterform in it. I rectified that in the vector file, and, because AI has layers you can turn on and off, I included the original version as well as the updated version, so Living Computers can, as the President said Colossus can do with its weapons, select and deliver whatever they consider apprpriate.

The updated version looks like this. The Guardian logo is much closer to the film version now.

[logo] A New Logo And Type Look for Salem's Transit

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I follow the news with the mass transit agency serving the greater Salem area, Cherriots. Mostly it's in the 'how much of it they got' department; having grown up in the Salem area, it was my ride around town for a great deal of my high school experience. It connected me with high-school and a good many things around my erstwhile and doughty home town, and it seemed to be more vulnerable to the vicissitudes of funding than the other two major systems I was then familiar with, the Lane Transit District and TriMet, whose service I always envied because in Eugene and Portland the buses ran later and they had transit on Sundays. I survived hour-long waits on Saturdays, buses that quit running around 7 PM, and at least one major service cutback (during the late 70s the service, which was then a function of the City of Salem, was curtailed back to within the city limits only, where formerly it had gone just beyond. We Salem fringers living along Lancaster Driver and in the Four Corners area missed it mightily until the Hamman jitneys came along, but that's all a story for another time).

Then Salem-Keizer Transit established its district, service returned to the Salem urban fringe, and I left town to see the greater world, in more or less that order. Latterly, Cherriots has had to cut Saturday service because revenue but has been extremely clever in using what they had to best effect, constantly rethinking service and how to deliver it. It's been an impressive story so far, and if Salem-Keizer Transit ever gets the funding I think they deserve, with the agency's creativity, Salem could someday have world-class mass transit for a city its size.

Since the 80s, the agency has had an informally-styled script logo with a visual pun on the name, which looked like this:

The o being styled into an abstract cherry and the name itself are all puns on a somewhat forgotten-by-now nickname for the capital, the Cherry City, Salem's cherry orchards once having been a great draw to the area in the spring. The Oregon Statesman and, for a short time, its successor, the Statesman-Journal, published suggested driving tour routes when those trees were in bloom.

Slowly infiltrating the agency's public presence and by now its printed and PDF collateral, has been this new look:

Featuring a hip, bold sans-serif font with some weight to it (which reminds me of the font used by C-Tran in Vancouver), the logo expresses a very mission-driven agency which is visualized by the sweeping curves both concentric on and emanating from the enlarged initial capital, which quite obviously evoke a high-speed highway.

The brand has been simplified; gone is the tagline Salem-Keizer Transit, it's simply CHERRIOTS now, and the simplicity combined with the sturdy, bold type gives a real visual strength and presence. The sweeping abstract highway provides dynamic tension in the way it emerges from above the C and in the way it ends on a cut-off angle. Gone also is the bright dash of red filling an o stylized into a cherry, a feature of the system's logo since its inception.

The brand is also going region-wide. Up until now, the division of Cherriots that provided rural transit service to Marion and Polk counties has been known as CARTS, an initialism that stood for Chemeketa Area Regional Transit System, whose logo wasn't much to speak of. CARTS is being rebranded as Cherriots Regional and being brought under the brand's banner.

The new graphic look hasn't emerged on the website but it appears to be on all digital and PDF collateral, including service advisory graphics as well as schedules, and presumably printed matter as well.

Bottom line here for me is that this is a fairly cool, modern look for a transit agency that hasn't changed much graphically in long time and stands comfortably alongside the other major transit agencies in the Willamette Valley; it's a refined, poised, and serious presence. As I read the current news about Cherriots, I get the impression that they are, at least in spirit, trying to lay the foundation for a fully-grown up transit system to serve Salem, maybe one that will at last have buses on Sunday. The logo fits an agency who is trying to level itself up into the next-generation system for Oregon's state capital city.

Those who liked the splash of red in a stylize cherry will have to make their own peace with that.

[OryCon] An Artifact For The Ages: The OryCon Travel Mug

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Another example of the OryCon logo in action. This year we got the chance to purchase a travel mug with my OryCon logo on.

This is what it looks like:

It's a stainless-steel thermal mug, with the 'con logo etched out of the surface. This isn't a decal. It'll last.

Sweet!

[logo] Kodak Is As Kodak Was: What Does 'Kodak' Mean, Anyway?

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As reported by many outlets that look at such things, the Kodak logo has been changed again. The new looks a whole lot like a certain golden age.

b. 1971, d. 2006

From 1935 to 1970 the company had been using the word Kodak in a thick-stroke, slab-serif (or, 'Egyptian') style, with the word in red and the background in yellow. The only change in that time was for the background yellow to go from a rectangular cartouche to a right-triangle in about 1960 with a curl suggestive of peeling the cover paper from one of those self-developing Polaroid photos that were the rage before instant photography became viable.

In 1971 the company went modern with an abstract approach that made the arm and leg of the initial K into a symbol also reminiscent of the way light converges to a lens. The word mark's typography was updated and found a home inside the arms of the symbol, which legend said was turned into a rounded quadrilateral meant to recall the visual outlines of a viewfinder.

The company stayed with this until 2006, when a sort of return to an earlier form was called for: the logo again reduced to a word mark, Kodak, in a serif-less red font that looked bespoke. The yellow was similarly reduced to a bold underline to this word, when it appeared at all.

born again, 2016

This year, what's old is newish again; that 70s logo has returned, as reset by the creative team at Work-Order, the wordmark is rearranged. Ten years after, and about nine years after I was taught that stacked type is a graphic design no-no, I am reminded that there are exceptions to all rules. as the stacked type works pretty well here. Not only that, but it brings to mind the sprocket holes of old 35mm camera film, evenly spaced along one side. Kodachrome, it gives you nice bright colors …

Wait. They took our Kodachrome away in 2010. Well, at least we have memories. And this. And Kodak is getting back into consumer photography, bringing back its signature Ektra as a photography-oriented smartphone, which is perfect if you have Paul Simon on speed-dial.

Which brings me round to another aspect of Kodak branding: while it's known that the "Polaroid Land Camera" was named for Polaroid's inventor, Edwin Land, the word Kodak seems inscrutable. That's a part, if accidental, of the design; the founder of Kodak, George Eastman, happened to just like the letter K. He found it strong and incisive (a perceptive man, said the author with a name beginning with K). The word itself was created by playing with letter tiles from an anagram set, and had to fit three criteria: 1) short, 2) cannot be mispronounced, and 3) impossible to be associated with anything else.

Coincidences may be coincidental, but George Eastman anticipated the concept of the word Exxon over 100 years before it even was possible.

And now you know. 

[logo] DC Comics' New Logo: Insert 'Back To The Future/Forward Into The Past" Gag Here

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DC debuted a new logo back in 2012 that was a break from their past presentations. Moving away from the obvious and straightforward presentation of the old DC bigraph, the 2012 redesign was abstract and, as the blog Brand New termed, 'FX-driven'. Featuring a sticker-ized D being peeled away from the C it was apt for customization for each character brand it was promoting as the peeled area made for a window into the world of each story.

Here we are, scarcely five years into that rebrand, and DC has chosen to re-logo yet again. The new logo is very pre-2005, with a few chips knocked out of the DC to give it some sort of edge and the letterforms enlarged to merge with the circle. It's sort of an updated-glory-days approach. Which is a thing that's accomplished.

There's nothing much really to say about it as such. It's a solid logo and gets the job done, but the 2006 re-design went over pretty well, and had grown on most of us that didn't care for it at first. It updates the pre-2005 look aptly, but it leaves you wondering what factor or factors of the 2006 logo were deemed to have made it weak.

So far the reviews range from the irritated to indifferent, and on a gut level, I can see why. It's not a bad logo, in and of itself. But did they really need to update it?

[design] Multnomah County Library's New Logo

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If you were asked what the logo of the Multnomah County Library was, up until now, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with one.

It was more of a wordmark, really, a designed arrangement of the name. After the Library 'went public' in 1990 (by the passage of a tax base measure which spelled the end of the private "Library Assocation of Portland … before which the LAP's seal was its logo) the word mark appeared alongside Multnomah County's stylzied "M" logo (seen right). During and for a time after the Library's sesquicentennial year (2014), the library logo featured a base of a large black block with the number 150 reversed-out of it.

This month, that all changes. The new, up-to-date Multnomah County Library logo, which should see our beloved library well into the next 150 years, has debuted, and here it is:

Of course,  we're prone to like anything MultCoLib does, but this is a winner. The type is current and seems to have that classic sort of feel to it that should prove to withstand the test of time. The abstract symbol, which recapitulates the abstract approach of and seems to share a similar palette with the County's logo, is shaped in an abstracted "L" (which can be made more than one way by tracing along the edges of the shapes) and can be viewed as a an open book, an open laptop computer … really, whatever you want to see there.

I see an open door inviting me to go down a passage, myself.

The new logo is expected to help coordinate a unified graphic approach to all County Library publications, which is another good thing a logo can do … become a linchpin, iconically providing a  pivoti upon which a holistic graphic theme can revolve. The logo won't become widespread immediately, as the Library plans to exhaust its stock of stationery with the old logos on it and phase in the new look.

The library's page on its logo's history and new look can be found hither: https://multcolib.org/blog/20160705/about-new-library-logo.

We think it well done. 

[pdx_liff] Vintage Taxi Poster, The Fox and Hounds

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Seen on the corkboard and The Fox and Hounds in Old Town (simply smashing burgers and fish and chips) was the following vintage poster:

How vintage is that?

1. You didn't have to dial "503".
2. Dig that Safeco logo.
3. Dig that Radio Cab logo.
4. The poster has the addendum 'OR WALK', and no Uber or Lyft-based snark. 

This thing is a straight-up collector's item.

[logo] When You Know The Rebranding Was A Swing and A Miss

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In the last two days, I found myself compelled to comment on two rebrandings; that of Uber, and that of the Toronto Maple Leafs. And I have to confess, I found myself only, at best, whelmed. I mean, the rebrandings worked on the basic level, and they were successful in as much as they resulted in a revised image that could be used, but were they good? Were they called for?

Ultimately, whether or not a rebranding works starts on a personal level. Anyone with a pair of eyes is a critic. On some level, the critic will write a critique, and maybe poke a little well-intentioned fun, on a slightly read blog. Most levels will be the eyeballs in the public; people like new things, and a lot of people will come look regardless of whether or not a 'please look at me', mildly-self-deprecating (Uber's mild poking fun at itself and its "90's haircut" was just so pitifully dear) toned press release or online newsroom post happens.

The mere observation that logos are everywhere and the most memorable ones become touchstones of pop culture (you know who Paul Rand and Saul Bass are, even if you don't know who Paul Rand and Saul Bass are), to me, hints at how we all care that things look, if not good, at least in a way that makes sense. It also hints as to why companies put a premium on image and why some spend so much energy on, hopefully, hitting it out of the park with a timeless logo or logotype.

So, what is is about the rebranding of the Leafs and Uber that leave me cold? I can't distill it down into just a pithy phrase or two (actually, I'm working on it; experience tells me that I can distill anything down into a pithy phrase or two; some things just take more time to bake than others), but I do know that the reaction to those rebrands left me more scratching my head in mild bemusement* than being all that impressed.

In the case of Uber, they got rid of the U-in-the-box, updated the type and beefed it up a bit. Okay, I guess. But what made it newsworthy was that it was deemed newsworthy at all. It didn't communicate any change of focus or message; it's just … well nice effort, I suppose. At least you showed up. You can beef up the type and put in little chisel terminals and fillets in the corners … but all you still have is a four-letter German loanword. I'm still not sure what change in company wit and wisdom really called for it.

Well, if it works for you. Those new app icons … well, if it suits you. It just confuses me.

The Leafs' redesign at least seems called-for. It's the centennial of the club, and they want to reach back into the glory days for visual inspiration and motivation. The neatness of the type works very well. But all the parts of the design each sending a message just seems to work too hard at being a logo. Look at it this way; if every nook and cranny of the design is intended to communicate something, to mean something, would the logo be any less rich and interesting if you didn't know that the 31 points and the total number of veins in the leaf as well as the number of veins above the type were supposed to tell you something? It's kind of like someone over-explaining a pun.

Trust me, I know from over-explaining a pun.

Keep it simple. And if you find yourself hearing the question 'is this trip necessary' asked out loud by the people you were hoping to impress … then maybe it wasn't. 

Logo redesign and rebranding can seem like a natural evolution, or a pitiable plea for attention. Sometimes, it's best to leave well-enough alone, or at least, don't overexplain it.

* bemusement is a synonym for bewilderment … not mild amusement. You'd be surprised how many people don't know this.

[logo] Uber's New Look Is Very Nice, Thank You.

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Contrary to what you may have heard, Uber hasn't changed its logo. It's changed its logotype. The old icon, with the U in the square, has been ashcanned; but in an attempt to portray it as the serious, grown up company it sees itself as, the wordmark has been beefified.

Basically, they've tightened the tracking, eliminated the curly bits, and put some fillets into the joints while making some of the terminals more like a chisel. You know, so as to generate some disruption, or excitement, or something. Does it move you? Make your own decision; a graphic comparing the old (top) to the new (bottom) can be seen at right. EXCITEMENT! I'm feelin' it.

The U-icon has been eliminated from the app. You'll see one of two things if you use Uber; users will see a circle with a square in the center and a line connecting the square to the edge of the circle; the drivers ("partners") will see a square in the middle of a hexagon with lines extending up and down to the perimeter of the hex. Each one of these is on a background with a fine tracery of lines whose colors are drawn from a palette inspired by each city in which Uber uberates … er, operates. The center square is called the 'bit', and the outer shape is called the 'atom', because Uber is a place where bits and atoms come together, or maybe they just meet kind of awkwardly.

The entire whale-song and joss stick sonata can be seen in Uber's newsroom, if one is so inclined, but for sheer commentary value, my favorite remark so far is at the end of this article at The Next Web:

Again, this all comes via an update, and is a rebranding effort; nothing about your Uber experience has changed, which may be the biggest oversight.

Oh, snap, you.

[logo] Google's Moving Finger Writes and, Having Writ, Moves On …

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Should our society and civilization survive past the year 2100, the furore regarding each Google Doodle (or lack of furore thereupon) will probably be seen as some sort of barometer.

We watch with bated breath to see what the netiverse makes of the first major Google logo change in many years

Before …

… during …

… and after.

This is the new look of Google, introduced with little fanfare on the 1st of September, 2015, 17 years, more or less, after Google was just a graduate project that Larry and Sergey came up with … which then, more or less, conquered the world.

The doodle is rather playful. A hand reaches up from behind the search box, wipes the old logo away, and redraws the new logo in colored chalk … one color stick per letter. The chalk letters change to floating dots, which converge into the new multi-colored G monogram, which resolve back into dots, then re-rezz into the finished new logo … which requires one more insoucient poke with the hand to go all into line.

Journey? Destination? Does it make a difference? Google reinvents itself pretty much whenever it feels like it, and usually does it in an entertaining way.

1 Sept 2015 is no exception.

[logo, art] Seb Lester Don't Need No Digital Design Program

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As anyone who spends time with a pen knows, it can do anything. Just takes practice, and effort.

As pointed at by this article at Sploid,  Seb Lester is the sort of pen artist many of us should like to become. Him and his ink can create visually-perfect versions of logos without resorting to one digital tool.

Now, don't get me wrong here … I love digital tools. Photoshop is one of the greatest things to come from the mind of man and woman; I'm in sloppy love with Illustrator, and have had successful and fun interactions with GIMP and Inkscape. I'd never want to completely do without computers. But ink and pen is the sine qua non of design, that without which we wouldn't have what we have. And just like pen and paper arithmetic is good to know, pen and ink design is a fundamental. You just don't get the physical feedback with computer design … there's a reason, I think, that when every digital designer I know of has the chance, they get a tablet and a digital pen. And it's no accident that computers have evolved toward a pen-and-tablet form factor.

You can get a lot done on a keyboard. The most human interface looks like what we've been using for, literally, thousands of years.

This video is about three minutes time-lapsed worth of Mr. Lester doing his astounding best. There's more links to more awesomeness at the Sploid article linked previous.

[#RCTID] The Portland Connection To The New MLS Logo

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As it seems to happen in cases like this, Soccer City USA, RCTID and all, there's also some sort of Rose City connection.

Love it or hate it, Major League Soccer has a new 'crest'-style logo meant to evoke a more universal soccer tradition. Divided into upper and lower halves by sinister (it's a heraldic term) diagonal line that extends from outside the shield, the letters MLS rule in the upper left corner supported by three stars, the three supporting 'pillars' of the brand, the three C's … Club, Community, Country.

But why those? What caused MLS to create those three concepts as core to the brand?

Well, because Portland, that's why. Brian Straus writes at SI.com:

Before the U.S. and Belize opened the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup in Portland, Oregon, the Timbers Army and American Outlaws unveiled a massive series of banners that featured ‘Cascadia Sam’ and the words ‘Community,’ ‘Club’ and ‘Country.’

So, now you know. 

[#RCTID] BREAKING: Major League Soccer Unveils New Logo

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(h/t Jeff Fisher at this tweet hyar) I, for one, didn't see this coming.

I've always been charmed with the cleat-and-ball logo that was MLS's identity … but, apparently, MLS wasn't all that down:

We are not like other leagues, whether in North American sports or other soccer. Our situation is different, our history is unique, and how we express soccer is decidedly North American. We have goals and aspirations that are distinctly MLS. As a result, our brand and crest visually reflect the type of business we are.

As of 2008, the MLS logo appeared thus:

It was in colors until 2008; since, this was the official version of the design.

MLS has decided that it was time for a design that was different, soccer … but all-American. The result is thus:

The organization explains it this way:

The new brand's design is intended to say “soccer: without the literal ball and cleat. In the end, we decided that the inclusion of a ball and cleat is unnecessary as it dates us very quickly (due to the fast pace of innovation in our game) while many other ways exist to signal we are a soccer league. Our new brand will build meaning over time so that our new crest signifies soccer in North America and has a unique place in global sports.

I get what they're going for. That slash extending beyond the shield though, on the lower left there … I'll be honest, I don't get that.

The new logo (which they call a crest but, as every self-respecting heraldic professional will tell you, is a 'coat of arms' … whether or not a College of Heralds recognizes and protects it is actually issue altogether) is designed with an ulterior purpose. The blank half of the shield is meant to give room to the team's personal logo or device and is intended to be cast in the team's colors. For instance, here's the #RCTID version:

The other teams' versions, plus all the whalesong-and-joss-stick logo talk you could possibly take unless you were a graphic designer (note; I love logo whalesong-and-joss-stickery) can be found at MLS's new rollout page … here:

http://www.mlssoccer.com/NEXT

#RCTID, baby!

[logo] KINK's New Logo: The KINKtrix, Reloaded

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This was actually pointed out to me more than a couple of weeks back, by Ben. And, by way of explanation, if not exculpation, whenever I tried to write about it, I found myself having to restate my words over the first few paragraphs.

Or, as, the say on FB, It's Complicated. 

KINK, Portland's legendary FM station at 101.9 on your dials, goes back a hell of a long way; 1968, an eternity in broadcasting, and an infinity in todays furiously format-flipping radio landscape. I don't think I'm unsafe in saying that Portland's radio landscape has gotten a lot more dreary since the the late 1990s, but fortunately we still have outlets such as KINK who, even if music has diverged and become richer in tone and substance, still approach it the same way … literately, with thoughtfulness and style and an awareness developed over nearly 50 years of taking the music they play seriously.

I was impressed by how seriously when I discovered that KINK is using the TuneGenie online service to provide its Listen Live function. This is more than just a simple stream. Each song is listed at the time it played, and gives links to online clips, the lyrics, and even to iTunes purchase links. Song you just heard caught your ear? Go ahead and buy it right now.

It's pretty nifty. This screenshot (from http://kink.tunegenie.com) gives you an idea (you might have to go through the main website at http://kink.fm to get there tho):

Classic Bowie, The Verve, and three or four bands I never heard of. All of that fits in with the new tagline … but I get ahead of myself.

My history with listening to KINK goes back to the mid-80s. It was the days where apartments in NW Portland were still affordable on the minimum wage; 1-room with a kitchenette on NW Flanders between 21st and 22nd with a shared bathroom in a very clean and well-maintained old mansion were $150/month. The meagre choices of jobs I would ere be offered was well on its way toward evolving me into the night owl I seem to have become, and KINK was the only station I ever listened to. I knew the late-night velvet that was Lights Out, which was nice because that was just enough jazz for my day. Steve Winwood ruled the airwaves and his songs won my heart. And there was else and other.

The 1970s.

The KINK format and approach has remained consistent and so, up until recently, has the logo. The original logo, legend has it, had block caps and a mountain and a bird, but that didn't seem to sit with the image the organization had for itself, so it's said, so in the early 70s, the wordmark that would serve in various versions for the next 40-odd years was created: the minuscule 'kink', in handwritten script. Relaxed, informal, yet erudite and smart, it neatly embodied the KINK vibe.

In those days, of course, radios didn't do any of this nancy-poncy decimal point frequencies. Sure, it's always been at 101.9 on the FM dial, but our Dads and Moms tuned to "KINK, FM One-Oh-Two", and they liked it.

The 1990s-2000s

Times changed but, as I said, the logo … not much. By the first decade of the 2000s the kinky script had moved out of the old square pad and into a newer and more modern oval with a yellow background. But the True-to-the-music spirit of the old logo was still there in its casual script, and the tagline was still True To The Music, even though the glyphs underlying the design boasted of its precise frequency and its web address as another place to tap into that KINKy goodness.

Scarcely a year ago the logo evolved again, as I wrote about in this blog here: http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com/2013/11/logo-kink-fm-true-to-logo.html. And here's what I wrote at the time:

Today's KINK is much the same as the 1980s version. But they've ventured more into live acts and similar promotions. The new logo, which boasts the terrestrial frequency as well as the legendary tagline, encourages you to think of KINK the way a lot of stations do these days - frequency-name, so it's going with the fashion in a fashion, but in some ways you gotta change with the times, even if your content stays timeless … as the script logo, which I've always enjoyed, does.

This was the then-new version of the logo:

Circa 2013, November

… which I was a little mixed on but I did enjoy the fact that they remained true to the logo.

Well, if you've seen any of the commercials they've been running on TV latterly, you'll know that the look is all-new and rather cool. And this is it (screen-capture from the website … no high-def available, unfortunately) …

My feelings are decidedly mixed about this. And they revolve around two poles. The first one being: I didn't think the old look was old, or dated, or needed to be particularly fixed in any way. But that's why I maundered prolix about what KINK has meant to me; you don't get to know someone for that long without learning the contours of their face. I grew up an inveterate radio-listener. A favorite radio station for me was part of my daily survival kit; you go to a favorite stream to get just the right kind of water – well, your mind is the same thing. You go to a favorite station to hear the music you want to hear, and KINK's eclectic, unafraid mix of what's new and what's classic is just the right soundtrack for late lights over a drawing board, noodling around in sketchbooks or writing in one's diary … or just grooving on the late-night air.

The second one is … this logo is pretty good, actually. There's been a trend in making inspired type choices carry the design water, and this sticks that landing pretty well. A note I enjoy is the way the callsign is in minuscule … the tagline, Discover Music (which is always delivered with a strategic, pregnant pause in the TV commercials between the two words) is in mixed-case. The strictly lower-case display of the call-letters, though, recalls the older 'handwritten' logo in a subtle thematic way. 

So, the logo works and works well. Kudos there. 

But to, all of a sudden, find that my old friend is gone and won't be coming back? I has teh sad there, folks. Sorry, I can't lie about my feelings here. 

So, good on KINK for coming up with a good, solid logo, easy on the eye, in fashion and current with the type. I do sincerely think it's well-done.

But, if you really must know, KINK's left its script signature on my heart, and that's exactly the way it'll stay there. 

[#logo] The Vincent Price Legacy Logo - Best Thing I've Seen Today

3114.

Or maybe I'm in a macabre mood, maybe that's it.

To anyone with a horror-movie bent (or maybe hunch-back, if you prefer), Vincent Price is an icon amongst icons. I remember growing up during the latter half of his career, just after he'd made is greats and was doing more television work than film. Funny thing about Vincent, though … he could star in the most throwaway piece of TV tripe but just having him there made the whole thing watchable. He was rocking the idea of being an past-one's-peak actor long before William Shatner even started to make it fashionable.

He did it by being a compleat personality. There was Vincent the aesthete, Vincent the intellectual, Vincent the style maven, and - most notably - Victor the gourmet cook and author, doing his small and stylish part to make the world safe for the modern foodie.

It's a bit unfair, though not inappropriate, to think of him as merely a horror film icon.

Toward the latter period of his life, he lent his considerable mind toward art. There is a museum of art and his legacy that exist in his name. The Vincent Price Legacy, http://vincentprice.com, is where you connect to all that awesomeness. But what's got me enthused today is that I stumbled on this pitch-perfect logo, which encapsulates all the sophistication, charm, wit, and style of the great man:

This is the first  time I've seen it and it is sooooo perfect.  Understated and urbane …

What I usually say?

Wish I'd of thought of it.

[#design] The Official "Portland In 2016" Westercon Bid Ad

3113.

I'm kind of the junior partner in this arrangement, but I'm thrilled just to be along for the ride. Far too infrequently do I get to look at awesome up close.

What you see, here, is the official ad for the "Portland in 2016" bid effort to land Westercon 69 for the Rose City, which will appear in the program book for at Westercon 67:

Quite the thing, neh? And I get to say that I contributed.

A precis:

The design suprema here is Meredith Cook. She has the sharpest design mind I've come across lately and I've found her incredibly inspiring. She's guided the the design effort so far and planted the seed (and did the hard beginning work) that grew into the goodness that is, and is sure to come. The general artistic appearance of that logo comes from her. I contributed a few ideas that serve to give it a little more character; it may or may not be what it is because of the bits I suggested, but it wouldn't have been at all if it weren't for her.

The base photo, that of that night-time Portland skyline, is my own work (as I detailed here). By making the bid effort logo circular, Meredith's design has enabled it to be used in the cleverest way …  the moon-over-town, lighting and illuminating a sky full of things that we love about Portland, and that sell Portland as the place for the envisioned Westercon 69. the whole effect is pure visual poetry to me, because as a place for fandom, Portland needs not too much more selling (at least in my personal, fairly smug opinion).

Westercon 67 is taking place in Salt Lake City this next month. That is where the vote will happen; anyone who wants to support our effort is welcome to do so (there's even a Pre-opposing contribution option, for those sufficiently perverse).

Portland in 2016 has Facebook and Twitter presences for those of you so inclined:

• On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Portlandin2016
• On Twitter: https://twitter.com/Portlandin2016

So, go support. Who knows … you might win a date with a unicorn!*

*Maybe, I guess. I don't know from who, but anything's possible … if you believe!

[#design] 600-Or-So Portland-in-2016 Bookmarks For Westercon 67

3111.

The Wife™ had a little busytime project.

You see, we're involved on the edge of a little group that's trying to bring Westercon 69, in 2016, two years hence, to Portland. The bid will be voted on at Westercon 67, being held this next month in Salt Lake City, and we have been promoting.

And, by we, I mean a rather divers group of passionate individuals doing what they can, when they can, and making it count. The sun our planets revolve around is the inimitable Lea Rush; entropy fears her, scattered card decks stack themselves at her mere approach. I am essentially a graphic design support grunt at this point, and provide support to Meredith Cook when and as she needs it. The Wife™, she handles the office we've called "Mailroom".

In case you ever needed to know
what more than 600 bookmarks
looked like, here you go.

How to Support
the Bid
(click to embiggen)

At this point, it is as such: a call came a day or so ago from Lea wondering how many bookmarks were left. We had started a stock of 5000; less than 2500 are left (we may have a handful or two left over before this is done, and this is no sin … we own lots of books which require marking), and the mission; send 600-or-so of them to Westercon 67's ComCon. Mailroom snaps into action: The Wife™ counts out the required number, packages them up, and gets them ready to go.

They're in a box, right now, ready to be shipped. Inspired by the example of those around us, the proper amount of energy is leveraged for the maximum effect. USPS Media Rate is our faithful friend, and Westercon 67 will have the bookmarks.

Which are sweet, by the way. Featuring the logo designed by Meredith with assistance by myself, they feature a picture of a night-time Portland skyline snapped by the ViviCam 3705, the Plastic Fantastic, back in 2009. 'Tis a picture I'm most proud of, and I'm equally proud that it may help, in a small way, win a very significant moment in time for the fandom of the Rose City. This is the bookmark:

Like I said, sweet! The night-time scene has a little bit of Tron and Matrix-y stuff going on there. Great mood setting. The round patch is the offiical Portland In 2016 logo, done by Meredith with help from myself. This is the photo it was based on:

 And that was in January, 2009. Photos are forever …

And they make, I'll say again, sweet bookmarks.

Presupport is still available. Clicky to embiggen the back of the bookmark, on the left above (there's even a QR code for your enjoyment) for terms, or go to http://portlandin2016.org to find out more.

Yeah. This is something that should happen. 

[logo] What Obsessive/Compulsive Designers Obsess and Compulse On

3098.

Google changed its corporate logo a few days back, it would seem.

No? Looks no different, you say?

Well, peep this, posers.