[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.

[logo] Seattle's Public Radio KUOW Re-logos

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KUOW, one of the Puget Sound area's two NPR affiliates and, by reputation at least, one of the most listened-to NPR stations in the nation, has been on the air since 1952.

It's a historic blowtorch on the FM dial. Up until now the logo look has been like this:

It's also more recently used this look, which eschews the Futura for a bit of timeless class:

KUOW has changed its look again, going for something that's a little futuristic, a little hip, and a little retro:

 

I see all three, here. The abstraction of the letters into 3-d space gives me a retro-future feeling. The red lines giving volume to the letters while only serving as a transparent skeleton speak to me somehow of the past. The starring role of the call-sign continues a trend I've noticed of broadcast stations taking the focus off the frequency and bringing the call-sign front-and-center, to become more of a brand: here in Portland we have KBOO, which everyone knows by name even if you can't call the frequency to mind immedately. The type shows features of the hip, mechanically-drawn lines I've seen quite a bit of lately, that seem to have visual resonance even with an old-fashioned type lover like myself.

Not everyone I know is enamored of it, finding it busy, or with too much visually going on. I think I can see that. I'd be interested to know what other people think.

[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. 

[logo] Sacto Kings Debut New, Improved Logo

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... and this one in over the transom. The NBA's Sacramento Kings (which, I've incidentally found out, is the oldest continually operating franchise in the NBA, having begun in 1923 as the Rochester (NY) Seagrams) have changed up the graphic identity, retiring a look they've sported (sorry not sorry) since 1994 ... to be precise, this look:

Not remarkable, really. Got the job done, we suppose. Doesn't make us laugh, doesn't make us cry. Kind of bland, really. Like something you got from SportsTeamLogoMart; about the only logo with less passion is OKC's.

But now, This ...

Very effect. We're enjoying this much; tough, clean, smart, direct. Its clean design mixes the right proportion of design and attitude.

What really got us going about this logo approach was this version:

This looks like something a Sacto fan could get passionate about. The lion wearing the crown (whose simplicity of design is genius to us), morphing to the basketball shape. 

Pretty nifty, we think. 

Peep the entire approach here: http://www.nba.com/kings/gallery/gallery-new-kings-logos

[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] Toronto Turns Over The Old Leafs … for a New Old Leaf.

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The Toronto Maple Leafs are (is?) one of the oldest, most legendary teams in major league hockey in North America, with a history stretching back a century (as of next year). It's hard to argue with 13 Stanley Cups.

But the last Cup win was back in the 1960s; the dynasty days are far back in the rear view. And the logo is a hallmark of 70s design (reminds me of the uniform of the Houston Astros of about that time). It wasn't badly designed, but the simplified maple leaf outline seems to recall avocado kitchens and AMC cars more than a historically beloved hockey team (see above right).

The organization has met the challenge with that evergreen of solutions, a logo redesign. To summon up the glory days, they've reached back in that past, and come up with a new logo that looks more or less like the old one. Which isn't a bad thing, really; with an updated typeface and more attention to type layout, it's a well-done homage.

If if it suffers from anything, it's a bit too much leaning on everything having to mean something. According to this article on the CBC's website, there are 31 points for 1931, the day their original arena opened; 17 veins total, for the year the club was founded (1917), and 13 veins above the letterforms, for the 13 Cup wins. Give it credit for trying very very hard.

It may have tried a little too hard, though; the style of the veins in the bottom of the leaf has invited comparisons to the derriere. Well, if that's true, at least it's a logo you can get behind, so to say.

Game on?

[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.

[#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] Goodby KGW NewsChannel 8, Hello, KGW8

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A few weeks into the new graphics change over at 15th and SW Jefferson, and here are a couple of thoughts about that.

Portland's KGW-TV is one of the senior members of the broadcasting world; that it should get by on only three letters in its call-sign should tell you that – the system was rationalized a bit sometime during the 1930s/40s to only allow four-letter callsigns, and the three-letter ones were grandfathered in. KGW, to be specific, has broadcasted in one form or another since 1922.

During the 70s, 80s, and 90s, KGW seemed to change looks more often than any other station locally, at least as far as I can remember. In 1995, however, it went to the coinage Northwest NewsChannel 8, and then in 1996 firmed up the look: A wide one, with the word Northwest reversed out of a red stripe, NewsChannel in condensed bold italicized, and a comparatively-dainty 8 in a blue box of its own.

Myself, I found the coinage rather awkward to say, and a bit confusing actually; to me, a News Channel is one that has news on all the time, or most of the time, kind of like CNN was before you couldn't watch it without pulling a face while you raced to change the channel to something that wouldn't melt your head. It also subsumed the individual station identity, which I felt should always include the call-sign. But it worked for KGW, and it (or some version - in 2008, a version of the NewsChannel 8 logo mostly based on the FF DIN font once again highlighting the call-sign debuted, of which I approved) served stalwart duty as KGW's identity for nearly 20 years.

Reently, Belo, the company which owned KGW (and its Seattle sisters, KING and KIRO) underwent a major rearrangement, dividing its print media from its broadcast media into two separate companies. Subsequently, the broadcast media side was purchased by Gannett (the same company that publishes both USA Today and, locally, the Statesman-Journal down Salem way). And the changes rang.

This is was KGW's NewsChannel 8's logo:

… and this is KGW 8's logo now:

KGW's new logo look approaches design by pretty much eschewing design. It's a simple, stark thing now, the only thing brought forward being the the unique detail of the bevelled end of the G's cross-bar, which I've tried to use to identify the font this was constructed out of with, so far, no success (the closest WhatTheFont seems to come to is the 205 foundry's Maax Bold) (Update here: It's my understanding now that the font used here is Gotham, and KGW's graphic design king Jeff Patterson did that tweaking). It wins on the uncomplicated level, proving that sometimes next-to-no design is actually pretty successful design.

Another thing that this design does do fairly well is mesh with the station's new graphics. Gannett's USA Today original design brought us sections with color-coding, and KGW's new on-air graphic approach follows this logic too. Reading what I could get and following what I could on-line reveals that Gannett has a sort of empire style and all the broadcast properties carry this forward, including KGW's new website design, which is clear, clean, fairly tight, and works a great deal like USA Today's website does. The fonts on the website, according to the WhatFont bookmarklet I have installed in my Opera browser, indicate 2 fonts used overall: A version of Futura developed especially for USA Today's use called Futura Today, used for the menu headers across the top of the page, and Arial, which seems to be used for pretty much everything else.

And it all clicks pretty well together, proving that if you use it just right, Arial can be an asset rather than looking like the font you used because you didn't feel like going with anything other than the default.

The lower-thirds of the KGW news on-air presentation have been thoroughly revamped. They're harder-working now: the story being reported on occupies the large upper portion of the strip, with a colored line along the top indicating the 'department' the story falls into. Along the skinnier portion of the new chyron, the next three stories coming up are announced, with a similar colored bar immediately to each story's left noting their department:

The color along the top of SUPERHEROES SURPRISE BURN VICTIM here is purple, denoting a Feature story; the three upcoming stories have blue bars, denoting Local stories. They have a congruence with the USA Today scheme (they use the same colors for Weather and for Money, for example). While each report is running, if location or person ID information becomes necessary to display, the large title moves down and the necessary information appears in a smaller point-size in gray superior to the large title.

That's not all, of course. As these YouTube clips will show, the same approach is now being used by KGW's sisters. KING-5 in Seattle's looks like this (and gives a snappy example of how the new chyron works):



… and this is what NWCN's (Northwest Cable News) opening looks like now …



I've watched the KGW deploying of same, and I actually like it a great deal. Teasing stories is a tactic the programs use to keep you tuned in, and I understand this, but there's teasing and there's aggravating. Seeing exactly what they have coming up is a Good Thing™ and I very much approve.

Even though KGW is essentially using Gannett empire style, which is a sort of thing I usually dread, I find myself having to admit that, if it's a uniform thing, at least it does its job well. It's hard to be concise and informative, and on that level, at least, it's a success. 

[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] KINK-FM: True To The Logo

2967.I don't know if anyone else noticed, but Portland's legendary FM, KINK, has evolved its logo a bit.

Before:

… and after.

True to the Music has been the bywords for a long, long time now. And I've been a KINK listener for a long time. I've always liked the approach that KINK had to music … explore it, take your time to enjoy it. It's not the frenetic pace of most music stations. And you always heard something unexpected if you listened long enough.

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.

H/T +Ben Rippel.

[logo] Lloyd Llogo: The Most Portlandest Of Malls Gets A New Graphic Llook

2961.Portland's Mall is re-imagining itself.

The Lloyd Center is pretty much the point of entry of the Mall into the culture of Oregon. Built in 1960, once opened, Oregon shopping joined the national scene in as much as the modern shopping mall is concerned.

It's had its ups and downs; it went from a 100-store mall with an open courtyard to a completely-enclosed mall with two levels of shopping and one of offices. It's really going strong, and considering how some malls have died, are dying, or have re-imagined their own selves into sere multi-acre parking lots surrounded by big boxes, that's no small feat.

For many years, now, its logo looked like this:

… and this wasn't too bad. The rose-as-an-O was very appropriate design, and I always thought the type was rather restrained and refined.

The center has undergone a change of ownership, and the new owners have deemed a logo refresh is in order. Delving back into its 60s-past, here's what they came up with:

A report by KATU-Channel 2 relates that the new owners feel as though the design harkens back to the Center's original 'retro charm'. I can see this. The design would tessellate very nicely into one of those latticework dividers so popular in the hip, upscale pads of the 60s.

I must admit, it didn't take off with me right away. I didn't much care for the asymmetry, though once I pictured it as a wall texture, it clicked right there and then. It was a quirky inspiration, to be sure, that caused the designer to link three of the open circles with the L, leaving the one bolded into a C to stand outside, but after sifting the design in my head for a while, it works.

At least it does succeed in evoking a retro feel, and as far as that goes, it's a success.

[logo] 21st Century Fox: Oh, We See What You Did There.

2932.This one came in over the transom a little while ago and we put it aside until … well, whenever.

Seeking something somehow, it was decided that the time was ripe to rebrand the company that lords over the great studio 20th Century Fox (as well as other properties that we shant mention here). To be sure, seeing the tag line A News Corporation Company over the classic title card design of that movie studios logo was always a bit dissonant; even if I admired News Corp, the dryness of the name against the lush history of the 20th logo sounded a discordant note.

So, with this presumably in mind, and things being what they are in the industry, and with the news companies due to be split off from the entertainment companies (sounds nice, but considering the source we don't expect much improvement) Mr Murdoch commissioned a mission to updated the News Corp's image. Money was spent; hours were burnt, gods and men were born on the boardroom table, but mostly, money was spent. And what do we get in return?

This. (via the L.A. Times)

Oh. How … nice.

Yawn. 

Oh! 21st Century Fox. 

We see what you did there. Now will you switch off the klieg lights so I can go back to sleep?

We note that this is going to be the name of the new holding company for 20th Century Fox. They are not changing the studio's name, which would be foolish really.

Gizmodo has some cogent things to say as well.

Onward, ever upward.

[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] 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.