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

3226.

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] Have You Seen The New Portland Streetcar Logo?

3201.

I noticed this one a few weeks back. The Portland Streetcar, enjoying expansion to the east side and the prospect of actually closing a loop once the Tilikum Crossing is finally open, has a new look for its logo. Before, it look thusly:

The old look, with the city silhouette and the crossing tracks, is still on the stop's signs. It's a nice logo, pretty basic, rather flat. Gets the job done, though.

But then I saw this, now appearing on the streetcars themselves, though not at the stops yet:

Kind of nifty, no? There's more thought and deliberation with the type, which has an echo of Underground and Gill Sans. The logo has, rather refreshingly, avoided the driver to have something obviously Portland-esque in it, and has gone for a total abstraction. It reminded me of something more than a clever opened-circle and an abstract S. Not that I wasn't enjoying the suggestion of tracks effectively communicated by the break in the S-form.

And then I thought of the German S-bahn, and it's standard S-in-a-circle logo, which you'll see right here. The S-bahn is comparable in service to the Portland Streetcar; the Stadtschnellbahn provides more local and street level, perhaps you'd say 'tram' (in the European street-train sense rather than the American gondola-hanging-from-a-great-height sense) level service … much like the Portland Streetcar, which connects with its community in much more intimate way than the MAX, meant to pick you up here and get you out there, does.

A variation on the S-bahn logo, or the S-bahn logo being in inspiration? Sure. Why not?

We find the Portland Streetcar logo upgrade worthy. 

[#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.

[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.

[logo] 2 Fun Logos Spotted In The OC

3035.

Returning once again to that little hidden gem, downtown Oregon City, I found two fun and kind of funny logos on a business there.

The Verdict is a restaurant and lounge located on 8th Street between Main St and McLoughlin Blvd, directly across the street from the south face of the Clackamas County Courthouse, whence it obviously draws its inspiration. I've never been there but we might go sometime; the menu looks witty and in the parlance of the review sites, the prices are one-and-a-half to two $'s.

The logo, which is witty, looks like this:

With the scales of justice at different levels, I'd say we're looking at a split decision.

They also have an adjoining function space (in a building that their website avers is the oldest commercial building standing in Oregon) called, appropriately …

… The Holding Cell.

Whimsy in logo design is apparently a Constitutional right.

Case closed, though appealing.

[logo] The 43-Year Old Kid: Rolling Out The New Wendy's

2916.According to the news I've been following, Wendy's, the of the rather tasty square hamburger, has begun rolling out the new-look designs across the country.

You'll have no trouble spotting the old one.

Heavy type, curliques, a design that just takes you right back to the late 1970s, when 'old fashioned' was the ironic selling point (recall that when first produced, Pringle's Potato-crispy-thingies were marketed with a dude with a high-collar, a huge bow-tie, and fully swashed-and-buckled type as Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips, as opposed to now, simply being called Pringles (for which we imagine the singular would be pringle, obviating the awkwardness in calling this formed artifice a potato chip) and marketed by something that looks like an extraterrestrial with a bow-tie). Antiques were big (I was protiques before I was antiques, BTW) and everything billed as old-fashioned was seen as simple, honest, and more wholesome.

People bought that stuff in droves, man.

Despite my evident jaded point-of-view, Wendy's burgers always were better than the others, and the most satistfying fast-food option (at least until Jack in the Box invaded Oregon back in the 90s). But the 'old-fashioned' motif was carried through even to the laminate on the table tops, which was a composite of old-timey ads from old-timey newspapers.

That was then; this is now. Old fashioned has kind of gone back to being stale, dated, unimaginative, but there's Wendy's logo with the same look'n'feel they've had since the 70s.

To the brandcave, Brandman! Announced last October,  and rolled out over the past two months (Beware! Press Release! warning) the logo and wordmark brings the company's famous look forward but peels off all that retro cruft.

 

The new mark preserves the visual themes that those who redesigned Wendy's (the stylized cameo portrait of the founder's daughter at age 8, with the high-necked blue-striped white dress and the gravity-repudiating red pigtails, the ascending 'wave' in the name) saw as emblematic of that logo. The head and pigtails break out of the cameo circle, which is visually interesting because everything in the old logo was contained. The illustrative style of the young girl, I find, is accomplished and attractive.

They risked going Comic Sans with that script word design but safely avoided it, and made it rather attractive too.

It's tough trying to abstract the familiar into a design that looks updated without jumping the logo shark (We're looking at you, Gap logo), and Wendy's redesign isn't going to reinvent fast-food logos, but they really did a good job here. We like it.

Wendy's look has changed over the years more than is obvious. The Wendy's Company has a history of that evolution at the pdf here, which is also linked via the second press release, linked above the new-look logo there.

[logo] GLAAD's Contracting Name Means An Expanding Mission

2904.On a day when the Supreme Court considers pivotal matters such as whether humane treatment and regular civil rights obtain to those of who had the poor taste to be born other than heterosexual, I thought it would be germane, given my continuing interest in branding and logos, and marriage equality, to spotlight a particular change of branding - or perhaps, better said, an evolution.

The organization GLAAD - formed as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation - operates on the principle that words matter. By telling the human stories of those gay and lesbian people - your friends, and neighbors, humans, and functioning as a monitor on the media perceptions of gays and lesbians, they make that mission real.

Over time, the mission has expanded. Not only gays and lesbians but also bi and transgendered people face weal because of the way they lead their private lives in ways that heterosexuals not only do not fear but also can not, in some cases, comprehend.

Who gets physically attacked for being heterosexual? Nobody we've ever known. I am honored to count several LGBT people amongst my friends, and it's a daily fact of life for them.

In a timely coincidence, GLAAD announced a subtle but important change and shift in its branding. In a move designed to show solidarity in its mission amongst the entire LGBT spectrum, it has simply reduced its name to 'GLAAD' to reflect that inclusiveness. That move was announced on the MSNBC program Melissa Harris-Perry just this last week:

"It is a natural progression that reflects the work GLAAD's staff is already leading," said Cruz. "We respect and honor the full name that the organization was founded with, but GLAAD's work has expanded beyond fighting defamation to changing the culture. Our commitment to marriage equality, employment nondiscrimination, and other LGBT issues is stronger than ever, and now our name reflects our work on transgender issues as well as our work with allies."

The logo itself is elegant in its simplicity:

The mission of amplifying a message is aptly rendered into a graphic message here, and needs no further commentary on that point except that the glaad word mark is just as aptly positioned as the agent of that amplification. The shaping of the expanding soundwaves is a clever visual bonus that unifies the graphic element and leads the eye well through the rest of the design.

The tagline is a succinct statement of its mission as well.

The reduction of an initialism- or acronym-based name to merely its unified form is hardly new. The game Dungeons and Dragons was created by a company named TSR; in its original form, Tactical Studies Rules, the company originally flourished and grew, but as its core products contracted to just the D&D brand and moved away from more generic miniatures-based military gaming, the company's name shrank too; during its heydey and on into its absorption into Wizards Of The Coast, TSR's name was just that; the three-lettered initialism.

GLAAD's name evolution is kind of an opposite thing, though, in that shedding the words actually signifies an expansion of the mission. And we're 'glaad' to see it.

(NB: This blog and its author support marriage equality. Did we have to say?)

[logo] The Thorns Would Look Good On Your Arm

2902.I finally got a chance to take a good, close look at the new Portland Thorns FC logo, and I have an abashed confession to make.

At first, I wasn't all that wowed by it. It's a good and appropriate solution, and doesn't work against the team at all, but it didn't exactly excite me.

Then I took a nice close look at it.

My bad, people. This is one of those designs that rewards those who look and look again.

The logo (see right) has much cleverness to speak for it. In a conversation with the designer, Brent Diskin, in this Q&A at the team's site, we find out that this logo is full of clever: its circular design was informed by the history of similar football club logos down the history of the Timbers (both clubs have the same owner), that he was shooting for a design that resists datedness, and something that represented Portland on more than one level (the hypocycloid forms - the four pointed stars - that hold the letters F and C are inspired by the four-pointed star at the focus of the Portland city flag's design.

With so much Portland-centered passion here, we shouldn't be surprised that the designer is also a proud member of the legendary Timbers Army.

But what really got my attention was the roseate design at the center, called by the designer a vortex rose. A vortex it certainly resembles. At first, though, it reminded me of the strange looking roses we find in heraldic - coats of arms - designs.

An heraldic rose -
The arms of the German city
and region of Lippe

But as I said, it rewards the patient viewer. The 'vortex' rose has a lot of shapes at play with each other that mesh and work together as one in a very satisfying way. Not only to the forms merge in the center to form a five-petaled design resembling a soccer ball, but the red shapes spiralling out from that center look very much like salmon jumping the waterfalls on the journey upstream.

The 2 entwined thorn vines make loose five-pointed designs as well, which reminds me of the pattern on a soccer ball.

In the main, we wish we'd of thought of this. It's very well done. About the only thing that could be adjusted is the color scheme … the green of the vines and the red of the road are a little dark in all the versions I've seen, and tend to be dominated by the black of the logo's background. When you used a shaded color against black, contrast tends to suffer as a result, and the design elements get a little lost in the design.

The last thought we had after we had our fun playing in the vortex was that this was probably going to go on a lot of biceps.  It'd work very well as a tattoo, and as much ink as flows in Portland each year into eager epidermi, and as soccer-nuts as this burg is, I'd be quite surprised if that didn't happen already.

[logo] 'blnk' and you'll miss it …

2864.I've seen this logo around town, most notably in the parking lot of the Midland Branch of the Mulnomah County Library, quite possibly the bestest place in the world outside of my own house:

You'll find it, too, if you charge your electric car there. Public places have sacrificed a primo parking space (well, hell, we needed the walk anyway, right?) to a space devoted to serving a small, kiosk-like thing, which is about the height of an average-short human being, and with the cord dangling, resembles an ultra-thin gas pump as imagined by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Seriously, they do look pretty sharp. They are electric taps for charging up you aforesaid auto made and knitted into a neato-mosquito computer metering network made by the Blink Network. Since I drive a '72 VW Type I "Beetle" (that's Bug to you unsophisticates) and The Wife™ drives an'86 Subaru GL Wagon, we have no truck ('scuse) with such a thing; we proles can only do so much. But they are pretty nifty and clean designs, pleasant to look at and harmonizing quite well with the efficient aesthetic of a parking lot or space.

But that logo … bugs (so to say) me.

It's easy to see the cleverness there. The left-hand stroke on the minuscule 'n' has a tittle over it, and while the tittle is an integral part of your standard minuscule 'i' glyph, it makes little sense over an 'n'. It's strange, like only half of a heavy-metal ümla¨üt. And, since no distinction is made between the 'i' letterform and the 'n' letterform, eventually the 'i'-ness of it just disappears, and I read it …

blnk

… which I pronounce "blunk". Which is awkward, because "blunk" isn't a word at all, really. That's not to say that it's not at all possible, mind; Hebrew script, that gorgeous square calligraphy, naturally comes with no vowels at all; did you know this? You read the consonants and inferred the vowels.

But that's not how English works.

So, when you see this logo, keep your 'i' on the 'n' … but watch it! Blnk and you'll miss it.

[logo] Bye, Bye, Pac-Man: Microsoft Remodels Its Logo … And It's Pretty Good!

2861.For many, many years, this is what you've seen:

Obliqued Helvetica Bold with an odd little bite out of the O designed to line up with the S adjacent. Many famous logos acquire nicknames; NASA's classic is called the Meatball while a latter-day interpretation was called the Worm. The above rendering of MSFT's identity, because of that hungry little ovoid in the middle, was called Pac-Man. 

MSFT itself has been through a few versions. There was the one born during the Albuqurque days, and the gone-but-not-forgotten Bibbet.  Pac-Man came to was born in 1987 and died just now, in 2012, 25 years - a long time, an eternity for a technology company. But the logo, designed by Scott Baker, has been a stable presence, and not a bad symbol - one I've always felt showed exactly how far you can got with a tiny little bit of design, placed just-so.

It's not your dad's MSFT anymore, kids. This is what we are now:

Ta da!

Logos are supposed to be full of symbolism. MSFT tries to keep it simple here. The four-color pane, or the 'Symbol', are (cue the whalesong) intended to express the company’s diverse portfolio of products. Peter Bright, writing for Ars Technica, makes a number of interesting points, amongst them: the new Symbol is a better fit with the Don't-Call-It-Metro design grammar that MSFT has devised while, at the same time, being – at best – an awkward dissonance to the other logos in the family so far represented by Windows 8 and the new Office logo, both of which suggest a sense of visual perspective that is totally absent, here.

The best point he made, and one I missed until he pointed it out, is the obvious (now) point that the colors in the Symbol now exactly replicate the colors in the obsolscent Windows logo, making it perhaps an appeal to or a way of keeping the old logo alive, which would be a good thing to me, because I'm still unimpressed by the Windows 8 logo evolution, which takes everything that was interesting and, actually, kinda nifty about the classic Windows logo (one I always enjoyed) and turned it into something characterless and pretty dull.

But the risk when you update a well-known logo for a company as famous as this is that you risk also losing a sort of familiarity, a resonance, that's built of long familiarity. There's a lot of good will that the design carries, and you risk losing that.

The new logo is a success in as much as one thing I noticed that I wasn't aware of when I considered the old logo and was only really apparent in comparison: the old logo's heaviness and darkness. There's a lightness and a color with this that is really quite welcome, and the use of a type that appears to be Microsoft's house font, Segoe, gives it an instant visual home with the rest of the current MSFT visual look. It's trim, fit, clean, and modern. And that's good. And so is this logo.

Also:

• Straight from the horse's mouth: An article about the new logo from the MSFT blog, by Jeffrey Meisner.
• Shiny!: A thumbs-up critique of the new design by Tim Nudd at AdWeek.
• The voting is open: This article, at the Seattle Times, has a gallery of logo looks from the beginning to today and a web poll where you can vote and vote often for your favorite version.

[logo] Dominos Pizza, Dominos Logo - No Pizza, Just Domino

2860.The Domino's Pizza chain, nourishing legions of families and college students since none-of-us-remember-when, looks like it's going to start updating its image.

As revealed by Brand New, the Facebook page of Domino's New Zealand have rolled out a new look to the logo. If you don't care to follow the link above, here's the new face:

And if you've stopped paying attention (because you're not going to eat the logo, yes?) the old face was as such:

The diamond-shaped 'box' is no more; the blue now colors half the remaining domino.

Brand New's reporting signifies that it was not yet clear (at the time of their writing) that this was a local or chain-wide change, but Advertising Age and the Los Angeles Times have since published stories that indicate that this is more than just a logo rework but sort of a 'warm re-boot' of the entire brand, which has added things like artisan-style pizzas and is now working on a re-think of the Domino's store experience by spiffing up the spaces into more welcoming environments, and even maybe having a limited number of sit-down spaces at a few of them.

The new logo does show a bit more polish and sophistication. The type is where the slickness really shows; it looks like the type I see in the more hip print material I see, akin to Gotham or Freight or suchlike. The separation of the domino out is kind of a deconstruction, a 'dressing down' of the logo to its essential. The inclusion of the red is simply clever. The only real awkwardness is the matching of the the straight type with the tilted domino … they don't harmonize, and the space under the domino comes off as something one wants to fix.

But it's already starting to grow on me, so I think this one is a qualified success. I'd be interested to find out what the vox pop has to say about this one.

[logo] Your Logo Is Not Cool, Hipster

2858.Noting the trending preponderance of logos based on an X-shaped division … such as:

A designer of acerbic mien has started classifying them in Your Logo Is Not Hardcore, a tumblr blog that has rather disturbingly more entries than you'd think.

http://yourlogoisnothardcore.tumblr.com/

Via HOWblog.

[logo] Big Sky Branding: Now Bigger, With Extra Added Sky

2857.That other western collegiate athletic conference, the Big Sky Conference, comprising eleven full member schools and two football-only schools in nine Western states, has decided it's time for a makeover. The original logo:

Out with the old, and in with the new:

The new look certainly is more memorable than the old look, which wasn't bad, but isn't all that memorable. Old: there's stock typography, a type outline which is something of a cliche in the sports design world, and the skyward spark coming from the 'I' adds a dash of interest but really doesn't deliver that much in the way of excitement.

Maybe a change here was for the better, and we think it does improve on the old image. The type doesn't look like it came from a font file but rather some design happened to it. The logo also recalls the roots of the conference; while the BSC now fields members from the Pacific coast to North Dakota (Portland State University plays in the Big Sky), the charter members were six schools in the Intermountain West, the fabled "Big Sky" country of America. So there's the ice blue on the mountains and the deep blue of the sky. There's also a theatrical approach to the way the words spread out in a perspective way, although it does rather remind one of a Wheaties box in some way.

In this article in The Oregonian (which is really just a press release released as an article (the last paragraph is the giveaway) one interesting and thoughtful note is that the logo is also designed in a school-color appropriate version for every Big Sky school. The organization behind the actual design work is SME, Inc, which gave the Pac-10 (Now the Pac-12) it's new look and attitude.

Our verdict here is that we don't know if it's going to be up for any design awards or inspire a great deal of passion, but it's a solid and timely redesign that replaces a rather unimaginative design that was a bit tired and due for replacement.

(H/T to the commenter "Unknown" in this posting, who wasn't that wowed with it, but knows a neat subject when he sees one).

[logo] How Much For That Saul Bass In The Window, or If You Have To Ask …

2844.Saul Bass … logo design legend.

No, God.

Ever wonder how much God would charge you if you were His client?

My biggest sale using this approach was the Rockwell International logo and subsequent branding, which paid the Bass firm more than $2 million in fees over two years. Continental airlines paid us about a half million.

So saith Bill Haig, Ph.D., someone who is "not a graphic designer", but has a doctorate in logo design, and is one of the grand old men in the branding game. He did learn his trade under God, however.

The Logo Design Love Blog asked him how much the firm would bill clients and he gave some very enlightening answers. These were in late-60's dollars but it would still be a pretty sweet payday for any graphic designer or firm.

I think I have a business model now.

As Steve Martin once said, "This is what I'm shootin' for. One show …  goodbye."

[logo] I Love Logo Design: Bird Is The Word

2840.Twittah, as most of you know, just engineered one subtle logo rework. And they're serious about it.

Via Logo Design Love, the birdie has a strict set of things you must not do to it. Actually, this is the soul of good logo practice; the graphic standards guide specifies how the owner wishes it best used. Owners right. However, being what it is, and the Internet wag society being what it is, there's going to be some savagely funny takedown going on, such as with Gawker, who interprets this "don't do it" graphic:

From Twitter Trademark and Content Display Policy

… into the following standards, respectively. You must not:

• add a gray speech bubble next to the bird that makes it appear as if the bird is talking or smoking hookah

• make the bird be upside down

• reunite the bird with his bird family

• change the bird to a better color

• give the bird a small gray ledge on which to perch

• transform the bird into a bubble letter "t" or the word "twitter"

• give the bird eyes and legs and a song in his heart

• make the bird look the way he used to even though no one would notice

The company also asks that users not manipulate the bird, because he trusts you and he's too young and beautiful to be hurt like that.

So, be nice to the bird. Because the Bird is the Word, or as Doug Bowman, Twittah's creative director, intones, Twitter is the bird, the bird is Twitter. 

Aummmm …