Guest Editorial by Kosal Sen

The Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia is a popular tourist attraction that's within walking distance from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It's a funhouse of exploratory hands-on science. Kids can chase each other inside a giant walk-in human heart, gaze in awe at the IMAX screen, or sit and enjoy the planetarium sky. Though the permanent exhibits are meant for kids on field trips, adults are no less fascinated by the traveling exhibits that take place there, such as The Titanic, Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds, and King Tut. Through the years The Franklin Institute has maintained its well-respected, non-profit reputation by balancing educational material and fun without being too commercial or juvenile.

Kosal Sen is a designer at Sides Media Studio where spends his most of his time on interactive and traditional branding for small businesses.

MeadWestvaco, a global supplier of paper products, packaging and chemicals (and subsequently a resource used by many designers… for the paper, not the chemicals) on March 24th unveiled a new brand that shortens the company moniker to “MWV,” introduces a new ribbon element that is animated in a cheesy Flash presentation on the corporate website (more on this later), and incorporates the presumptuous tagline “How brands take shape.”

The new ribbon element that MeadWestvaco (sorry, MWV) uses is graphically interesting, and is a definite improvement over the much-dated look of the typeface ITC Eras that constituted the old logo. Because it is set in all caps, however, the new logotype sacrifices readability in favor of the clean and modern look of Helvetica… as a result, “Mead” is virtually indistinguishable from “Westvaco.” This is probably an intentional part of the redesign given the press release and CEO comments. The other aspect that bothers me is the extreme horizontalness of the brand; I am curious as to what a stacked version of the logo might resemble, and if it would be as effective.

In the promotional video introducing the new brand and explaining the positioning “How brands take shape”, the ribbon flies across the screen to New Age “space sounds” music, twisting and turning at right angles as it moves between foreground and background, and around short blurbs of text shown in perspective. For a moment I had flashbacks of the movie “Tron”, with all of its cheesy, “cutting edge” CGI graphics and animation (which was really cool back in 1982!).

The new positioning tagline for MWV is “how brands take shape.” While on the surface this proposition seems harmless enough, as a practicing designer (and a member of their target audience), something about it rubs me the wrong way—perhaps it is my conviction that brands are more than just great logos or clever packaging… or perhaps this blanket statement seems too arrogant for me. In the end, though, it is not necessarily what I think about this new MWV/MeadWestvaco brand, but about how customers perceive it.

Welcome to, as I found out this morning, the complicated world of Yellow Pages, Yellow Books and Walking Fingers. Like "Xerox" or "Kleenex", "Yellow Pages" has come to signify the market for those bulky telephone directories that magically appear at your doorstep when you least expect it. Yellow pages have existed since the late 19th century and now comprise a global network of directories published by different phone companies or local entities, and even specialty yellow pages developed for specific neighborhoods and target audiences. The Walking Fingers logo, the "Let Your Fingers Do The Walking" slogan, and Yellow Pages name were first introduced in 1961 by AT&T, and the subsidiary regional operating companies that made up the Bell System, but the logo was never trademarked by AT&T and, actually, AT&T happily allowed others to use the logo — this, of course, was rosy when AT&T was a monopoly and you didn't have Verizon, or SBC bombarding you with yellow bricks.

Original (top) and other yellow pages logos.

With the Walking Fingers logo available in the public domain, most phone directory publishers have used the logo to gain instant recognition. The problem, of course, is that it's impossible to distinguish one phone directory from the next — I sure know I can't, and specially nowadays with all the information available online, phone directories are irremediably obsolete and easier to ignore. Having said that, phone directories, and yellow pages in particular, have enjoyed a revival online, providing easy access to the information that is otherwise unbrowseable in that air-thin paper that paints your fingers black. One of the major players in this field is Yellow Book USA, which publishes the printed Yellow Book and yellowbook.com, and it recently launched a new web site and logo.

I have absolutely zero information on who designed the logo or what was the impetus behind the change. It's obvious that the logo needed an update, in part because of the typography — hello Serpentine Bold Oblique! — and in other, because I can't imagine any company being interested in having a logo that anyone else can have. Certainly, that doesn't mean that you should create a creepy logo. The new walking fingers for Yellowbook are the stuff nightmares are made of, at least mine… I can feel those detached, prickly fingers creeping up my leg to strangle me in my sleep. But I digress. The new typography is more contemporary and follows the lowercasing trend of corporate and consumer names, and the fingers have a more dynamic representation, so the theory is good, but the final execution is awkward. And with the black and yellow combination, I could not help but think of the Sprint logo immediately. Fingers and hands have always been a challenge for designers and, here, the challenge has claimed one more victim.

Thanks to Andrew Kidd for the tip.

Bonus material: New Zealand Yellow Pages ad

White socks. Trolley dodgers. Expos. Metropolitans. Frightening, right? It's one of the many things I love about the game of baseball. Non-threatening mascots. Bears can be scary, but a cub? That's just cute. Oh sure, you can hate a Yankee (just ask anyone down south or from New England), but they don't really make you quake unless you're still living in the 1860's or the one facing Joba Chamberlain's 98-mph fastball. Minor League does it even better, with its vast array of gentle souls. Mud hens and Zephyrs. Express trains and Isotopes. Awesome. So I welcome our feisty but not angry wood chewers from the northwest, The Portland "Lucky" Beavers, back to the club with their updated, old-school and, most importantly, friendlier identity.

Home and Alternate Sunday Home uniforms

The coastal beach and blue color palette seems appropriately derived from the Beavers' Major League affiliate, the San Diego Padres. In the grand scheme of things, a color named "Rose City Accent" is a bit unnecessary, but the designer in me loves it. As an identity designer, I love coming up with proprietary color names. If you haven't attempted to name something "deep purple", then you haven't lived. So I completely approve the serendipitous nod to the rockin' John Cafferty and his favorite color, Beavers Brown.

The mascot itself is based off an older version of the team's logo. I found a version dating back to the mid 1960s, but it could just as well go back to their origins in the early 1900s. It replaces what I call "stink eye beaver". As I said, baseball just doesn't have threatening logos. This ain't the NFL. Even all those indian logos are mostly big-grinned caricatures (I'm smiling at you, Chief Wahoo). So the former angry beaver just doesn't fit. Besides, how are you supposed to hit a baseball with one eye closed?

Finally, the use of the beaver tail is just sweet typographic dessert. On the cap logo, it's the bottom arc of the script P. On the uniform script, it's the fat end of the B in Beaver and P in Portland.

It might be time for a road trip, because I'm definitely eager to see this identity in action.

Hat image ©milb.com

Thanks to Darrin Crescenzi for the tip.

Update: Thanks to our author Ryan Hembree for providing a color version.

I can't stand the thought of taxes or administrative tasks — it's not that I'm above it or that I am too creative to be bothered by them, I just get confused easily — but it is with fond memory that I remember Intuit's TurboTax software that allowed me to file my very first 1040EZ form for my 1999 taxes when I originally moved to the U.S., a daunting task made significantly easy, even with that old android dude of a logo sticking its pixelated head out of the side of the box. Earlier this month, Intuit unveiled (internally) a new logo that replaces the android with a more broadly humanized representation of, well, humans.

"The brand will be rolled out gradually on the Web and in conjunction with product launches beginning in the fall," according to Rich Walker, Intuit media relations. "This refreshed brand will place new and broader emphasis on the Intuit name. It will serve as our corporate brand and as the master brand for our small and mid-sized business products."

The site also mentions that New York-based Lippincott designed the new identity, which is a vast improvement from the previous one which feels dated to a time when people had just discovered computers. The new logo does verge on the cliche, with the "t"s taking the shape of stick figures, but somehow manages to make it work semi-convincingly. I am not a fan at all of the upper and lower case combination, but the letterforms are at least unified in weight, making the shifts less jarring.

What looks like a cell phone picture of what could be the internal unveiling of the logo. Photo from mtnbkr1's Flickr account.

The image above shows a nice detail when the logo exists as an object, with the dots being produced as spheres, instead of just extruding them as tubes. Until I wrote this post I had no idea that Intuit was also the maker of QuickBooks, the current administrative tool of UnderConsideration LLC, which points to both the fact that I don't pay enough attention to this aspect of running a business (luckily, my wife and partner does!) and that Intuit as a brand is generally overshadowed by its products that probably enjoy more market recognition than their parent company. This new identity feels more poised to be a visual cue in branding the company's popular products.

Thanks to Michael and Simone for the tip.

Brett Wickens, Vice President and Executive Creative Director at MetaDesign (and of former Ceramic Hello fame) has been kind enough to provide us with some valuable insights into their recent redesign of SanDisk, the world's leading supplier of innovative flash memory data storage products.

Brett Wickens: There were two main reasons for redesigning the SanDisk logotype. First, the company was establishing a foothold as a consumer electronics company with the success of products like their Sansa media players — second only in sales to the iPod. This suggested that they were entering territory dominated by Apple, Canon, Sony, Samsung and others, all of whom but one (Apple, which has a symbol) have logotypes with tremendous equity. Second, SanDisk invented, and remains the leader in, flash memory storage. Some of these chips can be smaller than the fingernail on your pinky. The previous logo did not print very well at such small sizes.

CP: Could you tell me about how this project began? For example, was it always going to be a matter of redesigning the typography and abandoning the logo mark?

BW: Initially, we were invited to the table by SanDisk’s leadership because of the success that we helped Adobe achieve with their rebranding and packaging efforts. That work caught the eye of a lot of technology customers and leaders.

So, our work began with a discussion with the leadership of SanDisk. It was our belief that despite years of exposure, there was little unaided consumer recognition of the so-called “flash mark”. It also contributed to legibility issues: it was a distraction from the company’s name, and caused the name to be even smaller when reduced to very small imprint sizes. And it was formally at odds with the existing style of the wordmark.

The “flash symbol” origin, as I understand it, came from two places. First, the company used to be called SunDisk when it was founded in 1988 (It later changed its name to SanDisk as a result of some controversy with Sun Computers in the early 1990s). Therefore, the flash illustration could be interpreted as rays of sunlight. Or, it was a simplistic attempt to visually depict the idea of a “flash” (as in flash memory). I believe that the overlapping parallelograms were meant to portray actual memory chips.

For these reasons we were certain that it was more important to focus on creating a strong logotype.

Many companies think they need a symbol, but few actually do. And when they think they need a symbol, they usually want it to be “diagrammatic” — to be an illustrative capture of everything they do. Of course, that’s impossible. If you are blessed enough to have a name like Apple or Shell, then you can pictorially represent the noun in a stylized way, and even add some overt personality to it (like the bite taken out of Apple’s logo, implying “forbidden fruit&rquo;.) If you have a compound or invented name, then pictorial solutions become a lot more difficult. You also have to be prepared to spend years — and a lot of money — getting people to recognize you by your symbol alone.

CP: Was there a brief developed for the project?If so, would you share with us some of the objectives, attributes or challenges outlined in that document?

BW: Well, the brief — which we wrote — was rather extensive because it involved not just the logotype, but also a comprehensive audit of SanDisk’s visual and verbal presence in the world, its brand positioning, messaging, packaging and all the other elements of a comprehensive rebranding program. Here is a summary of the objectives from the brief:

1. Streamline the logotype to:
- reflect SanDisk’s desired position as a trusted consumer electronics company
- enhance recognition and legibility
- accommodate a broader range of application techniques

2. Own a distinctive color

3. Clarify and harmonize packaging and product information design

4. Own a “look and feel” that:
- represents the intersection of “intelligent technology and human values”
- embraces the brand attributes of creativity, power, and ubiquity

5. Create a brand system that is manageable and easily extendable

Of course, some of these objectives apply more to the overall story of SanDisk on the retail shelf than specifically to the logotype, especially the desire to occupy the intersection of intelligent technology and human values. That bit is really about creating smart products which we use to share our most personal, entertaining, valuable or critical business information.

CP: How does your design process begin?

BW: It starts with a meeting with the leadership of the company. We like to have face to face discussions with our clients to really understand their business objectives and their self-identified needs for change. From this, we can help determine what actually needs designing. Is it a logotype? Better packaging? A better process for managing a design system? There are many possible answers that can only be determined once we understand the client, and immerse ourselves in their world by taking receipt of existing strategic documentation, samples, field observations and analysis.

For the design of a logotype, the brief is discussed with a team of our designers. With identity programs, I like to cast the net wide at first. I like to see ideas that comprise equal parts “art” and “logic”; I like to see what happens when we move the needle just a little bit to places where we move the needle off the chart. From that vantage point we curate the solutions that best respond to the brief and we usually end up showing as many as three directions to the client, though we always have one particular solution that we would recommend.

CP: Does MetaDesign have a formalized process of creative exploration and revisions?

BW: The “format” of creative exploration is usually left up to individual designers, though I provide guidance and direction where appropriate. I have been designing for over 25 years, so my experience helps guide designers in avoiding common dead-ends or, more importantly, to find fruitful lines of enquiry.

As for revisions, we do have a formal process where the chosen direction is refined based on both client feedback and my direction. When discussing final directions with clients I try to remove as much subjectivity out of the equation as possible. As experienced designers, we simply know what works and what doesn’t. That experience is what clients are paying for.

CP: While the client places their trust in the experience of their hired designers, certainly they often have strong opinions about specific visual elements or ideas — how do you effectively remove this subjective influence from the evaluation process?

BW: Deftly. Sitting in front of a CEO — or board — and telling them why your solution is right sometimes feels like you are giving the closing statements in a courtroom trial, albeit in a friendly manner. You have to be acutely aware of the clients situation, the competitive landscape, some “futurecasting” and, frankly, presence and engagement. It’s very much about literal storytelling, with a beginning, an arc, and a dénouement — so that your audience can come to no other conclusion than the one you are trying to reach with them. That being said, I’ve experienced my share of plot twists and alternative endings.

CP: Were there specific reproduction or contextual issues that guided the formal solutions?

BW: Yes. There were the usual multi-media considerations (does it look good in print, on the web, at television resolution (all things we test for) but this project had the additional issue of very small scale reproduction in chip manufacturing, where a rapid silk-screening process is used. This latter consideration certainly guided the typographic craft of many of our solutions. The other main driver was shelf presence. If you go into any retailer and take a look at the shelf where memory cards are sold, you will notice a chaotic mess which subjugates brands and — even worse — prevents customers from quickly identifying what they need. We believed that a reasonably sized, more streamlined SanDisk logo, the presence of SanDisk red, and comprehensive color-coding and typographic system would help overcome both of these unfortunate realities.

CP: Any difficult obstacles to overcome either in the design or management of the project?

BW: The packaging was probably the hardest nut to crack. We had just come off a hugely successful redesign of the Adobe CS packaging and initially tried to apply some of the metaphor-based thinking that went into solving that. But we quickly realized that a systemic, and frankly, more obvious approach to the design was going to be more helpful to SanDisk’s customers, and SanDisk itself. We have a very powerful project management team at MetaDesign, and to their credit the project was handled smoothly, with any obstacles being identified far enough in advance to be dealt with appropriately. Another issue we frequently have to deal with is foreign languages. A system designed in English may present issues in other roman languages, like German, or non-roman languages, like Mandarin. We have to be cognizant of all the languages so that the system can accommodate localization without the system falling apart.

CP: How were the solutions evaluated?

BW: For the most part, the solutions were evaluated internally in collaboration with SanDisk’s leadership. I personally presented the identity options to Dr. Eli Harari, SanDisk’s CEO, and we discussed the benefits of each solution. In the end, he made the decision about which one he felt best represented the future direction of his company, and he agreed with us that moving the needle too far might diminish the existing equity of the brand he and his team had worked so hard to build over the years. We also didn’t want to confuse SanDisk’s loyal audience.

I am a strong believer in NOT subjectively testing logotypes or identity systems. Typical research techniques such as focus groups, IDIs (in-depth interviews), intercepts and web surveys, yield very little actionable information. All that market research can tell us is what the most number of people don’t mind the most, and that seems like a huge compromise to make when you are trying to tell the world something very important and very personal about why people should care about your company.

The only testing we generally recommend in identity projects is cultural testing: does a style, color, symbol or word have a particularly negative meaning in a particular culture. If it does, then we weigh that into our refinements and decision making process. In the case of SanDisk, there were no issues.

CP: Compared to the previous logo, how is this redesign better?

BW: Formally, it looks more professional, sophisticated and trustworthy. The typeface we created added gravitas that the existing logotype lacked. We tested it for legibility and presence against the logotypes of SanDisk’s major competitors and it staked it’s territory very well. It retains the character of the previous logotype, and pays homage to the old “flash” mark by shaping the dot in the “I” as a parallelogram. Probably the biggest difference between the previous and new logotypes is simply that the stroke width of the characters is now more uniform. The previous version suffered from too great a difference between the thicks and the thins in letterforms.

Systemically, it is simpler and more legible. This allows it to be used as a solid figurehead for a more complex information system that has to communicate to customers — at a glance — what format of memory they are buying, how much memory is in the card, and what the most common uses are for that type of memory. For the latter, we designed a highly recognizable icon system that accompanied each of SanDisk’s multiple SKUs.

In marketing collateral and advertising, the new mark has far more presence and legibility without expanding the footprint of the original logotype/mark.

CP: What process do you employ to test legibility and presence of the logotype against the competitors?

BW: We put them all up on a wall and look at them. There is a formula we use: you take the cap height of the work and multiply it by 200. That gives you the maximum distance from which the logotype is generally legible to people with average eyesight. For example, the maximum viewing distance for a 72 pt cap height logotype (or any typography) is 200 x 72 pt = or about 16.5 ft. So, from that distance you can evaluate legibility and presence when all logotypes are matched to cap height.

CP: Were there any valuable lessons you walked away from this project with?

BW: I can say without doubt that one of the tenets that I strongly believe in was reinforced by this project, even if it wasn’t new to me. That is, “good design is not about what you put in, it’s about what you leave out.”

It’s also important to filter previous learning because not everything you know will be applicable to everything in the future. You have to determine what is right for a given situation, and be open to new possibilities. As the futurists used to proclaim, “all things flow…”

CP: Thanks so much for sharing these insights with us.

A new identity, designed by Open, has been launched for WNYC (93.9 FM, AM 820), the regional provisioner of NPR & PRI news broadcasting and arbiter of exquisitie cultural infotainment. The station is recognized for its nationally syndicated programs hosted by namesakes such as Brian Lehrer and signature shows such as Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen. For non-New Yorkers, live and archived shows can be accessed at wnyc.org.

The new blocky mark is formally staid in contrast to the modular and retro predecessor. A sober weight of Gotham is resilient at small sizes online. Moreover, this tight approach fits in the familiar family of NPR and BBC. At first glance, the call sign is unembellished as four distinct letters...but with a twist. I am inclined to guess that these blocks are a clever attempt at fusing a skyline of buildings with the LDC volume readout of a boom box. Those thick red bars seem more likely to blast Van Halen & Howard Stern rather than Rachmaninov & Leonard Lopate. But who says we shouldn't rock out to the latter? The re-brand must have been timed to coincide with the station's anticipated move to an 80,000 sq ft space at a former printing facility in Tribeca fit with its own street-level performance space.

Window graphics of the new facility were designed by Poulin + Morris (Prior to the new identity?)

Welcome to the block party.

A former incarnation from the 80s, by Dan Friedman at Pentagram.

There is nothing more exciting for global conglomerates than having a "Biggest [blank] Company in the World!" catchphrase, and the latest addition to this lofty echelon of behemoths is Thomson Reuters, the biggest business media company in the world, that resulted from the purchase of Reuters by the Thomson Corporation, a deal worth billions of dollars and stock fluctuations. Yesterday, the new company unveiled its new identity, designed by Interbrand.

Thomson Reuters digital billboards in Times Square. Photo by Flickr user xsquare2, who has more images in this set.

The new identity overall, as it plays out on the web site and the billboards, feels indeed dynamic and interesting, and the multitude of dots are put to good use. Unfortunately, those seemingly hundreds of dots make for a rather lousy and mundane icon, better suited as an initial Adobe Illustrator sketch exercise than for a conglomerate — and their arrangement is pretty unimaginative, there is nothing expressive about them. The wordmark is a little more interesting, it feels unique, composed and contemporary — although the real star of the identity is the typeface being used on their web site that is almost similar to the one in the logo, I think they can build a lot of recognition through that typeface. Not sure if it's off the rack, or custom-made and proprietary, suggestions and clarifications welcome.

If you visit reuters.com, you'll see that that entity still maintains a little more brand hierarchy by using a Reuters wordmark, picked up from the new logo. A smart move to keep the name recognition of Reuters while extending the identity application. Overall, I like this new work, it is very well suited for its audience and the global business landscape. But I do hate that icon, specially when it gets rendered small, it just looks like the eye of a storm on the local TV news report.

Reuters sign in Dubai gets stripped down. Photo by Jumana El Heloueh/Reuters from nytimes.com.

PhotoShelter, a "provider of archiving, e-commerce solutions and sales opportunities to the world's fastest growing community of independent photographers," founded in 2005, recently exited its Beta stage and has entered the busy, online stock photo marketplace with the intent of bringing back more control to the photographers whom they work with.

Cinco Design constructed the icon with photo frame-like windows to convey protection akin to PhotoShelter’s role as an advocate for photographers’ rights, royalties, and creative freedom. The design team selected a lush green as PhotoShelter’s official color to emanate life and the freshness of the company’s products and thinking.
— From Press Release

Where this logo falls short is in its execution. Conceptually the “shelter” is a viable idea that marries well with their company's mission, however the rendering yields a rather flimsy shape that seems less solid and/or protective. One of the visual extensions of the logo's form is the speech bubble, which you can see employed on the PhotoShelter web site in the footer, and while it's possible that this could become an ownable graphic device for PhotoShelter (as much as speech bubbles can be owned these days), the opportunity seems rather under-explored.

T-shirt image swiped from Cinco Design's blog, where they have a post about working on the project.

The typography got an update as well — darker, bolder and without the potentially dated CamelCase. Where this new typography is extended into the body of the web site its seems to work well through bringing a more authoritative visual voice than they had previously. However, the trade-off in the case of the logotype is decreased legibility (a product of the all-caps setting with its tight kerning) and less personality. While the original typography was far too light in value, the mixed-case was easier to read and the typeface had more character. Overall this redesign comes to life on their web site where the bold typography and colors are designed into a more lively layout — which is likely a visual language that can be extended into other collateral, however the logo itself will have a long road to travel to communicate the identity and attributes of the company to their audience.