[pdx] Juanita vs. Josefina: A New Chip Tries To Block Off The Old Chip

3071.

Josefina is out to get Juanita.

This could get ugly … but we hope not.

In this corner, Juanita's yummy-a$$ tortilla chips … an Oregon original, made in Oregon, by Oregonians of Latino descent. Hood River produces more than apples, beer, spirits, windsurfers, and charming train rides.

In this corner, the challenger … Cocina de Josefina, produced by a plant off Fruit Valley Road in Vancouver. Local? Kinda …  as Willamette Week has revealed …

But while the chips are indeed made in the Northwest, they're manufactured at the Vancouver Frito-Lay plant at 4808 NW Fruit Valley Rd., the Columbian first reported, and Frito-Lay is listed nowhere on the packaging because, in the words of a spokesperson, "this is a specialty brand in the Northwest. We wanted it to have that local feel." Some stores display the chips with "Made in Vancouver" signs.

Remember these commercials?



Now, it's true that Cocina de Josefina brand is made in Vancouver, but since the initiative doesn't seem to come straight outta Vancouver, it makes us think of a trend in marketing that makes us pretty sad, and that's this compulsion the big players seem to have to horn in on every single market they can make an excuse to compete in. Life is homogeneous as it is, and Frito-Lay is hardly hurting for customers. Cocina de Josefina … whose bags, while not identical to Juanita's, has a design resonance which seems more than coincidental … is apparently going up against Juanita's, and, well, those are some great chips. You can't really improve on what's already good and satisfying.

The best you can do is reinvent the wheel. An the wheel's rolling pretty good as it is.

Well, they're going to do what they're going to do, regardless of what lil'ol' me says. So, for me and my house, we'll stick with Juanita's.

When you have a choice between the fake-local and local, I recommend going with the local every time. 

[logo] Four Blue Screens: The Windows 8 Logo

2782Software brand identities, they be funny things, yarr.

Software enthusiasts tend to fly these things like flags and they begin to feel as though, merely by looking at a symbol and identifying it it becomes, in a certain real way, theirs. I remember the minor uproar when the icon for the Mac Finder got changed just a little; the big collective point-and-laugh when Quark debuted a logo that was all but exactly identical to that of the Scottish Arts Council; and the wistful sigh of regret when Apple shifted from a rainbow to a cold, glossy sheen.

Didn't know so many people felt that way about Alar. So 1980s.

Anywhoozle, it struck me as odd that Microsoft should even want to update the Windows logo. I thought it rather keen. The original logo, back along about Windows 1, was very straightforward and functional. Showed what it did. Didn't mess around.

Yup. Pretty nifty. But it went from that, evolving, to this:

The accent for me isn't so much on the type (though I enjoy it muchly) but the evolution of the graphical representation of the idea of windows. It was obvious up top, and here in the middle it has the flag-like wave the world has come to know and love in the design. 

There is a thing in design called dynamic tension. Anything squared off and balanced or aligned or symmetrical expresses a sort of 'locked down' feeling … all energy balanced, all bases covered. Giving something a slant visually suggests unbalance, and we all understand potential energy on a primordial level, so we imbue the unbalanced logo with a sort of energy. Dynamism. Tension. Dynamic tension. And despite it sounding like a damnation, in Logoville, dynamic tension, artfully managed, can visually energize a logo.

But MSFT has a habit of not leaving well enough alone. And thus, and so, and here, courtesy of the design giant Pentagram is the new look of Windows 8:

The four blue screens. 

I don't place a whole lot of emotional value into the Windows logo, actually; there are other logos I care much more about. But I thought, in its 7 incarnation, with the warm color and the reduction of the wavy-flag look, it had arrived at a certain good place. And then MSFT took it elsewhere.

I don't think it's a failure, per se; Windows 8 is going to live and die on whether or not it's a great OS. I can't believe that MSFT doesn't have a few more tricks up its sleeve; with the formerly-beleaguered Apple now well resurgent and on its way to the top of the IT heap, MSFT isn't the computer-gawd it once was, but is still a Titan, with human experience worth, as the MCP might have said, worth 'millions of man-years'. The personal computer of today isn't the same as the personal computer of 2003 (or even 1993) and that's where the battle is to be waged.

But in the side-skirmish that is graphic design, the Windows 8 logo is kind of blah. Nothing to get too excited about. Flat. A bit uninteresting. But it does synch-up nicely with MSFT's Swiss-influenced "Metro" design language, emphasizing simple, clean typography, simple shapes for thumbnails and straightforward design. 

In that way, it is a success.

But the logo? I think they should have left well-enough alone. The flag? It was kinda cool.

[design, logo_design] Tips From An Obvious Master

1185. From Inside / Outside: From the Basics to the Practice of Design, Second Edition, by Malcolm Grear:

(a logo is) a simple tool, like a hammer; it has a straightforward function. Anything that gets in the way of that function weakens the effectiveness of the tool. Keep it simple. Same for symbols. Simplicity, clarity, elegance. And by elegance I mean the sort of form that a wide diversity of viewers will find visually active and easily remembered. Being memorable matters a lot. If the form is ornate, it can't stick in memory. Simple and ugly is easy; simple and boring is easy; simple and vague is also easy.

That's one reason I aspire to logo design. CreativePro.com has an excerpt from the above New Riders book (which is where the quote comes from) which you can download (it's a PDF) via the article at this link hyar.

Highly recommended.

Technorati Tags: design logo_design logo design Malcolm Grear

[logo_design] Adobe AIR Can Haz Logo Naow

1119. In order to get Adobe AIR's branding unified, Adobe has created and debuted the AIR logo:


I'm getting a discussion started over on Designorati here. I'd really be interested in hearing what people think about this (including how calling it "Adobe AIR" is the same as saying "ATM Machine" or "ABS Braking". Or, maybe not).

Technorati Tags: logo design,Adobe AIR,Adobe Integrated Runtime,branding

[logo_design] Is This The New Holiday Inn Great Sign?

1077. In my explorations of the Holiday Inn "Great Sign" I saw, from time to time, hints that they were going to bring it back in some form or another–an "updated Great Sign" which implored the traveller to "Relax...it's Holiday Inn" was mentioned but I could never find an example of this creature, despite much Googling strongly suggesting that more than one had been put up.

Then, trying just one more time, I was led to a post at this blog, whose writer snapped a pic of a rather amusingly worded directions card for their "Wireless" (note, these are not unnecessary quotes) Intermet service. The appearance of this sign as the illustration seems more than coincidence.

It's not the Great Sign of old but it's an improvement over the modern look. Just retro enough, and you can't beat a classic look like this.

Seriously ladies and gents, he noted an amazing funny there. Surf over and see it (least I can do to thank him for posting this so I could nick a screenshot from part of it is to peel off a little of my traffic and send it his way). The man knows humor when he sees it.

Tags: brand design, Great Sign, Holiday Inn, logo design