BY Armin

The Nine Dots of the Apocalypse

Those nine little dots have impaired any and all constructive blognalism™ that I could have mustered, so let’s just get a few facts out of the way: The VNU Group, a very large media group based in the Netherlands, has changed its name to The Nielsen Company and rolled out a new identity designed by Landor. The change is a response to “Nielsen [being] one of the great names in the information-services industry,” as CEO David L. Calhoun states and, indeed it is. When TV networks throw around rating numbers they are usually referring to Nielsen Ratings, a system developed by Nielsen Research Media. Other well known enterprises under the Nielsen umbrella include: Adweek, Brandweek, Billboard, Claritas, The Hollywood Reporter and dozens of others. One thing is clear, The Nielsen Company is a leading, powerful, important, global conglomerate. So…

How can a company with these credentials adopt and endorse such a weak and unfocused identity that is a direct reflection of not only The Nielsen Company, but of all the other stones in the pyramid? Other than a nice choice of blue (100% Cyan if I’m not mistaken) the new logo falls apart, literally, at every letter with its completely inappropriate stencil styling of, what I think is, Times Roman — someone please correct me or shoot me out of my mysery because these wispy letterforms don’t stand a chance in this big, bold world we live in today, plus the fact that Times Roman a) should never be used as the main typeface for an identity and b) it should not be tampered with because it only lets out toxic fumes**. Oh, and, yes, there are nine dots underneath the wordmark. Surprisingly… no, extremely surprising, there is no press-releasing on what those nine dots mean. In just five minutes I can come up with some asinine reasoning: They represent the nine tulips in the lobby of their headquarters, they are the sum of the letters of all the companies divided by the number of letters in the new company name, they are the decorative element in their CEO’s office, they stand for the number of hours it took to slice those poor lowercase n’s from their stems. But, no, nothing is offered, other than inflicted despair courtesy of yet another example of paltry design execution — plus, what’s worse, a gross misrepresentation of the company as expressed through this particular identity. The Nielsen Company, how do I pity thee? Let me count the ways: One dot, two dot, three dot, four dot, five dot, six dot, seven dot, eight dot, nine dot.

** Update: Whew, it’s not Times Roman, it’s Big Caslon.

\n\nThose nine little dots have impaired any and all constructive blognalism™ that I could have mustered, so let's just get a few facts out of the way: The VNU Group, a very large media group based in the Netherlands, has changed its name to The Nielsen Company and rolled out a new identity designed by Landor. The change is a response to \"Nielsen [being] one of the great names in the information-services industry,\" as CEO David L. Calhoun states and, indeed it is. When TV networks throw around rating numbers they are usually referring to Nielsen Ratings, a system developed by Nielsen Research Media. Other well known enterprises under the Nielsen umbrella include: Adweek, Brandweek, Billboard, Claritas, The Hollywood Reporter and dozens of others. One thing is clear, The Nielsen Company is a leading, powerful, important, global conglomerate. So…

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