Opinion BY Armin

Slant This Way

Today we are going small and local… Established in 1995, The Slanted Door, located in San Francisco, CA, is one of the most renown Vietnamese food restaurants in the country. Led by James Beard-nominated chef Charles Phan, The Slanted Door has grown from a hole in the wall establishment to a posh spot in the foodie-friendly Ferry Building and is the center point of a family of four restaurants under The Slanted Group Door umbrella. A new identity has been designed by San Francisco-based Manual.

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Opinion BY Armin

MOM’s the Word

Established in 1919 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Malt-O-Meal Company is the largest family-owned cereal company in the country. Well known for its eponymous hot cereal, a combination of malt flavor with farina cereal, Malt-O-Meal Company now offers more than 70 different products through ten individual brands — including Malt-O-Meal, Mom’s Best Naturals, and Three Sisters among others with cold cereal being their biggest sellers at the moment. This week Malt-O-Meal Company announced it would change its name to MOM Brands and introduced a new identity designed by Duffy & Partners.

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Opinion BY Armin

Boom Goes the Cloud

In Beta and Alpha versions last year, CX (formerly Cloud Experience), a “cloud storage and data file management system,” launched this month. Aiming to compete against Dropbox, CX allows users to sync their files, e-mail, and calendar on the magic place that is the cloud and they are trying to do it with more graphic and social media flair than Dropbox. Their new identity has been designed by Moving Brands.

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Opinion BY Armin

Bongo Comics Loses Some Bongo-Ness

Established in 1993 by Steve and Cindy Vance, Bill Morrison, and Matt Groening (creator of The Simpsons and Futurama), Bongo Comics is a comic book publisher devoted to off-shoots of Groening’s two popular TV series that has included fan favorites like Itchy & Scratchy, Radioactive Man, and Krusty titles over the years. Its most current roster of titles focuses on The Simpsons and Futurama, as well as carrying Mad magazine genius Sergio Aragonés’ Funnies. Since most comic book publishers are rebranding this start of 2012 Bongo Comics is introducing a new logo for itself and its titles, designed by their in-house designer Serban Cristescu.

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Opinion BY Armin

With Windows Like These Who Needs Enemies? [UPDATED]

Gearing for its latest OS release — after a couple of lackluster and user panned versions in Windows Vista and Windows XP (and continued mockery from OS X users) — Microsoft has been slowly releasing previews and developer versions of Windows 8, a complete rethinking of one of the most frightening computer-using experiences. Based on Microsoft’s “Metro” design language, Windows 8 adopts the user interface currently in play on the Windows Phone OS. By the end of February, Microsoft will release a consumer preview (don’t call it Beta) of Windows 8 and its new logo was recently spotted. Update: This post has been revised with design credit to Pentagram partner Paula Scher and text from Sam Moreau, Principal Director of User Experience for Windows; scroll to the bottom.

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Opinion BY Armin

Men’s Journal Gets Manlier

First published in 1992, Men’s Journal, as its name implies is a lifestyle magazine for men with a circulation of more than 700,000 copies to an 84% male audience. Owned by Wenner Media, Men’s Journal is a sister publication to Rolling Stone and Us Weekly. Last week the magazine introduced a new logo designed by renown letterer Jim Parkinson — who previously drew one of the past versions of the logo — in collaboration with Men’s Journal art director Benjamen Purvis.

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Opinion BY Armin

HotelsHotelsHotelsHotels.com

Launched in 2002, Hotels.com is an online service to reserve lodging around the world with more than 145,000 properties listed. The last time we talked about Hotels.com was in 2008 when two separate logos, one for the U.S. market and the other one for international sites, were introduced. Since then, Hotels.com has completely abandoned the bellhop mascot and adopted “SMART”, a soul-patched claymation spokesperson that is not as annoying as he may seem at first glance. This month, Hotels.com has introduced a new logo.

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Opinion BY Armin

Tahoe South is Where It’s At

Located smack in the middle of the border between California and Nevada states, Lake Tahoe is one of the most popular vacation and fun-having destinations in the U.S. with a mix of nature-y stuff like skiing, hiking, boating, and more as well as, thanks to its Nevada location, plenty of gambling. Lake Tahoe has two main cities, Tahoe City to the North on the California side and South Lake Tahoe on the South still in California but a stone’s throw away from Nevada, making it more attractive to the work-hard-play-hard crowd. In charge of the South side is the Lake Tahoe Visitors Authority who are intent of making their side the side to be in. Changing the destination name from Lake Tahoe South Shore to simply Tahoe South, they have introduced a new identity designed by San Francisco, CA-based Duncan/Channon.

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Opinion BY Armin

Winged Tiger on the Loose

Established in 1920 in the UK, where their first vehicles were “milk floats” deployed by dairies for deliveries in London, Smith Electric Vehicles is one of the leading manufacturers and marketers of zero-emission commercial electric vehicles, specializing in trucks for corporate fleets to companies like PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division, Coca-Cola, and Staples. Smith was launched in the US in 2008 and in 2011 the American corporation purchased the UK parent company and in order to establish a consistent global brand, Smith introduced a new identity in November, designed by San Francisco, CA-based Strohl.

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Opinion BY Armin

Dr. Quaker and Mr. Quaker

Established as the first trademark for a breakfast cereal in 1877, Quaker Oats has been providing cereal to America and parts of the world for more than 135 years. That’s a lot of cereal, people. Now owned by Pepsico, Quaker offers a broad range of products, from cereal to granola bars to oatmeal to tight little bundles of rice crackers — more than 40 different sub-brands in total. And this expansion is starting to show some confusion. Without any press releases or information, Quaker has introduced two new logos in the past two years, both operating in parallel while the original logo remains in play across non-updated products, and has just started messing with a bunch of its most popular cereals.

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