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Interesting discussion about the design and typography decisions behind Wellesley College's logo redesign process.
Wellesley Identity Video Presentation on Vimeo.
Typedia is a fascinating site and a great place to get lost for an hour or two. Created by a team that includes Jason Santa Maria, Khoi Vinh and Dan Cederholm, "Typedia is a community website to classify typefaces and educate people about them. Think of it like a mix between IMDb and Wikipedia, but just for type. Anyone can join, add, and edit pages for typefaces or for the people behind the type." But before you even start browsing the type listings on the site, check out John Langdon's blog post on the design process behind the site's logo. An interesting glimpse into the back and forth design process between talented people who love what they do.
Wolda (Worldwide Logo Design Annual) has announced the winners of its 2008 logo design competition, and without exception the designs are clean, elegant, timeless, and place a premium on concept. No drop-shadowed, beveled, reflected Web 2.0 logos here. Interesting, too, to see so much typographic cleverness.
Speaking of logos, here’s a redesign that just hit it out of the park. In preparation for the 100th anniversary of the Good Housekeeping Seal in 2009, designer Louise Fili did a wonderful job of capturing the brand — the new seal looks like it’s been there for every one of those hundred years. Check out the swooshy “modern” seal it’s replacing on Brand New, where they discuss some of the confusion over which version is actually the new one. (We’re so ready to expect a wrong turn from corporate design that there’s almost a double-take when they get one right...)
Logo Design Love shows us some of the early iterations considered by the Obama creative team. Lead creative Sol Sender: “We developed a lot of logos. Usually we only develop two to four, maybe five. There were 15, 16 options, and we focused on three.” They explored quite a few variations on the 08/OB juxtaposition, and it’s interesting to see the early version of the final logo — the relatively small change to the red stripes makes a huge difference.
Saatchi & Saatchi has unveiled revisions to the iconic American-Typewriter-and-red-heart “I Love NY” logo created by Milton Glaser in 1977. Although the logo hasn’t been “revised” so much as it’s been “accessorized” — festooned with small, generic illustrations, different graphics for various purposes. The version with the squirrel seen here represents the “parks” theme. Jim Edwards at bnet has more images and lots of reaction links; hard to find the cheerleaders for this one. The brand guidelines pdf is especially interesting reading. No mention, though, of how all this might affect the business development brands created over the last few years that have remixed the logo elements: NY Loves Business, NY Loves Film, and many others, including a couple that Zone 5 has had a hand in: NY Loves Nano, NY Loves Clean Tech and NY Loves Bio.
The first thing that pops into my mind when Saul Bass’ name is mentioned is the classic title sequence from The Man with the Golden Arm, one of just many amazing title sequences he did for directors like Hitchcock, Scorsese and Kubrick. Here’s a reminder that his logo work resided in the stratosphere as well: 12 iconic brands that have really stood the test of time.
