In Brief BY Armin

Groovy Lines

Now in its seventeenth year, the London Jazz Festival (LJF) has grown from a showcase of local talent to a world-class event spanning ten days of what are surely life-affirming sounds. There are a couple of reasons why we are turning our attention to the LJF today. The first is that, well, it’s a striking identity job by London based IWANT Design, who created what amounts to a visualization of the various sounds and energy emanating from the festival. The second is that I first saw this work right around the time we were covering scribble-heavy identities like Telecom and Burnley and my first thought was that this is how a scribble-heavy identity is supposed to be made. It’s not only a graphic feast but it serves a conceptual purpose that fits the mood and audience of the festival, and is not just some randomly generated scribbles that happen to look like fun.

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DATE: Nov.20.2009CATEGORY: In Brief 39 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

B is for Blue, Beer and Bavaria

Brewing beer since 1719 — a good hundred years before its main competitor, Heineken — Bavaria is the second largest producer of beer in The Netherlands. I’m not a beer connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination but I drink enough of it and any kind of it, that I’m somewhat familiar with plenty of large brands but, for whatever reason, I had never heard of Bavaria. Or maybe I had and I may have even drank it, but the reality is that its existing look is so beer-generic and non-distinctive that I wouldn’t be able to pick it from a beer line-up if a party depended on it. Last month, Bavaria introduced a bold, cohesive new look for its range of beers that spans everything from the glass you drink it in to the crates you use to haul it home.

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DATE: Nov.19.2009CATEGORY: Consumer products 51 COMMENTS

In Brief BY Armin

Follow-up: Art Directors Club

In retrospect I should have originally approached Trollbäck + Company for further details on the new Art Directors Club identity. I typically do but, for whatever reason, I skipped that part of the process. To make things right — especially since the comments were very, let’s say, spirited — and to give the identity the fair overview it deserves (just as the rest of everything we show here) this is a follow-up showing the complete identity system. Whether this makes the logo more palatable or not is, of course, up for discussion. Jakob Trollbäck has shared with us a PDF of the full presentation — of which there excerpts below — and some rationale for their work.

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DATE: Nov.18.2009CATEGORY: In Brief 75 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

Odd Building, Odd Logo

So, wow, the Art Gallery of Alberta building in Edmonton, Alberta is weird. I don’t mean to dumb down my critiques with such a thoughtful opening statement but sometimes you just have to go with your gut reactions. Since I’m not an architecture critic I may be missing something from this 41-year-old building designed by Don Bittorf, but the best I can equate it to is this is to Frank Gehry what Arial is to Helvetica. But I’ll better stick to identity criticism. Last week, the Art Gallery of Alberta announced a new logo designed by Edmonton based Vision Creative Inc. to accompany its new acronym, AGA, and the imminent re-opening of the gallery in January of 2010 as it finishes an ambitious, 85,000-square-foot renovation by Los Angeles based Randall Stout Architects.

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DATE: Nov.17.2009CATEGORY: Culture 76 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

An Iconic Lion for an Iconic Institution

Few places in New York have the undivided reverence of its inhabitants as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street: The New York Public Library (NYPL). From its grand foyer, to its inspiring reading room, to its secluded microfilm archives, to any of its special collection rooms, nearly everyone who has visited has a favorite space they can quickly bend your ear about. But the NYPL is more than just one building flanked by two massive lions — named Fortitude and Patience — it is a network of 86 physical libraries in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island as well as an online network housed at the Digital Library that is constantly growing with web friendly content. From signage, to print materials, to web applications the NYPL has had a proper identity implementation over the years, but its previous logo, with its intricate drawing, had its own set of implementation problems and last week the Library introduced a new logo for the first time in at least twenty-five years.

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DATE: Nov.16.2009CATEGORY: Culture 101 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

Shielded Mountain

I don’t ski, among other things I would rather not do. But judging from the number of tips about it, it looks like plenty of Brand New readers do, or at least plenty of them have an odd attraction to following news from ski resorts around the world. Killington Resort in the town of Killington, Vermont boasts about being the biggest (and meanest) set of ski slopes in the East Coast as well as having one of the most productive snowmaking infrastructures in the whole U.S.. For those that understand skiing lingo here is all that Killington offers. While other ski resorts in the region have gained ground on the market, Killington is going with a new marketing campaign, and identity, created by Factory Design Labs to cement back its position as the leader, and with this vintage tag line revived, “The Beast of the East,” their work has been cut out for them.

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DATE: Nov.13.2009CATEGORY: Hospitality 94 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

Tonka gets Tougher, Sort of

Childhood. Trucks. Tonka. No questions asked. Well, at least not for us reading today who probably grew up with, or grew up wanting, one of those heavy, badass steel Mighty Tonkas that felt indestructible in our tiny hands — a far cry from today’s wussier Mighty Dump. Or anything else that Tonka makes these days, for that matter. Cute, chubby and safe, I’ll admit, but certainly not the vintage brand association that one makes with Tonka, the company that began making trucks in cold-as-hell Mound, Minnesota in 1947 manufactured by Mound Metalcraft Company. Part of Hasbro since 1991, Tonka’s line of toys are friendlier and have more plastic than steel, and somewhat recently they introduced a new logo that is slowly appearing in new packaging.

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DATE: Nov.12.2009CATEGORY: Consumer products 39 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Sam Becker

Commerzbank Folds

The sweeping consolidation of banks worldwide continues with the merger of Germany’s second and third largest financial institutions: Commerzbank and Dresdner Bank. The new entity, to be named Commerzbank, has enlisted the talented, local and proven (though Erik-Spiekermann-less) design firm Meta to perform the brand alchemy. For all to see, the result is clean, rational and undeniably German.

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DATE: Nov.11.2009CATEGORY: Finance 46 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

ArtDirectorsClubNewLogo

If you don’t mind, I would like to quote a wonderful design book: “As illustrators like Norman Rockwell were blurring the lines between fine art and advertising art during the 1920s, the Art Directors Club (ADC), initiated by Louis Pedlar in 1920, brought together a group of layout artists, managers of art departments, and art buyers to explore the role art could play in advertising. No more than a year later, Earnest Elmo Calkins organized the first juried exhibition; this effort survives, nearly 90 years later, as the competitive ADC Annual Awards, which now receive up to 11,000 entries from more than 50 countries. Its Young Guns Award, offered to the top creative talents under the age of 30, has also seen an increase in popularity and fierceness since its inception in 1996. With a remarkable location in Manhattan, the ADC is host to events from exhibits to portfolio reviews to incendiary programming like 2006’s Designism and its 2007, 2008 and 2009 sequels.” (Not to mention they also hosted this wonderful series). Nearing 90 years of service to the creative community the ADC has introduced a new logo.

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DATE: Nov.10.2009CATEGORY: Graphics Industry 123 COMMENTS

Opinion BY Armin

Architectural Identity for Applied Sciences University

Starting with the 2009/2010 school year, the Northern Hogeschool Leeuwarden in The Netherlands — a 10,000-student, medium-sized university specializing in applied sciences — will be known as NHL University, and will soon be occupying a new, fancy and diagonally-inclined building designed by Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger. For the university’s new era, Amsterdam based koeweiden postma designed a new identity inspired by the building.

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DATE: Nov.09.2009CATEGORY: Education 39 COMMENTS