In October of last year Brink's Home Security, the 26-year-old consumer and residential division from security and protection company Brink's, was spun off as its own company and went public. As part of the agreement, Brink's Home Security would have three years to drop "Brink's" from its name. This week the company announced its name change to Broadview Security.

Last year, we hired Landor, a top-tier branding agency, to help us develop our new name and brand. As part of Landor's research and development process, we involved employees and customers to help us determine the key elements of our organization, our brand and our legacy that are essential to who we are. In addition, Landor conducted external market research to ensure the brand resonates with suppliers, partners, customers, and other external audiences. Finally, we tested and narrowed down our choices. Then, Broadview Security was selected.

There is no confirmation or clarification whether Landor also did the identity, but hopefully they will be happier with this project than they were with Syfy. I do like the name change, it sounds comforting and it's probably better to take a few steps away from the Brink's name which is typically more associated with their armored trucks and people with bullet-proof vests and shotguns.

In terms of the identity, the softer and more vibrant blue is definitely an improvement over the gloomy and corporate dark blue of the previous logo, certainly more consumer oriented. I can perfectly imagine the pitch for this logo as the sideway parentheses being like hands protecting and cradling the consumers, and it sort of works. You do get a sense of protection and support. For some reason I keep wanting to see a smile with the lower parenthesis, but the logo does not seem to be smiling at me. For a consumer brand this is remarkably serious, which goes well with the subject at hand, so it's nice to see that they didn't go with lowercase, bubble typography to appear friendlier and warmer. Overall, if I were contracting security for my home, this identity lets me know that Broadview Security means business.

Thanks to Justin Molloy for the tip.

For most identity designers, companies like LogoWorks, LogoBee or whatever other cute name they acquire, are not to be taken seriously and are only seen as damaging to the industry by lowering (rather ridiculously) prices and quality. For offset and other specialty quality printers, companies like Vistaprint hold a similar position: cheap, fast, mediocre quality. If you have ever printed anything with a quality printer and anything with Vistaprint you know the difference but, let's face it, most civilians (non-designers) people don't — which is worth more than $400 million in 2008 revenue for Vistaprint, according to their 10-k. And Graphic Arts Online, lists it as the 40th top printer in North America.

Thanks to John Mindiola III for the tip.

With over 40 stations covering all of Mexico, a handful across north of the border in the U.S., and over a dozen south of the border in Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama and Ecuador, EXA FM is one of the largest radio networks in Latin America. This month EXA presented a new identity that takes advantage of its amazing short name — anything with an "x" in it is awesome — to create a simple and bold ambigram. The final execution is a little wonky, I think the shapes (particularly the counterspaces) could have been better resolved but the design concept is exa-llent. (Sorry, couldn't resist).

Thanks to Ramon M. for the tip.

No matter where you are right now — specially on a Monday — the thought of being in a Caribbean island surely does not sound like the worst alternative to reading about logos on a blog. But if, like the rest of us, you are stuck in front of your monitor the least we can do is show you some design related to Caribbean islands. Earlier this year the Department of Tourism of the U.S. Virgin Islands launched a new identity, designed by J. Walter Thompson, with a Mocko Jumbie, a traditional stilt dancer, as its main icon.

Detail of icon and logo in one-color application.

This is one of the best destination logos I have seen in a while. The exotic, vibrant and varied nature of the U.S. Virgin Islands is very well captured in the colorfully fragmented icon, which has a lovely graphic tension with the small upper body and giant lower body. The three stars representing the main three islands (St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas) add a certain magic flair to the logo without, I think, being too corny.

Detail of typography from PDF.

In terms of the typography, I'm really not sure what's going on, the press release PDF shows a very distorted treatment which is not quite as evident as the logo on the web site, but it may just be the size difference. If it's indeed intended to be so scribbly, I think it could have been a little less of an Adobe Illustrator Distort filter. Nonetheless, I have to admit it looks good when reduced.

So if you can't fly to the U.S. Virgin Islands any time soon maybe just get yourself a pair of stilts to go with your business casual attire.

Update: Thanks to first-commenter John for pointing out that the work is also represented at Iconologic. The image from their web site is shown above. The press release I quoted originally states "Following a series of focus groups and months of rigorous market research by Atlanta-based advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson […]" so I assumed wrong that JWT did the logo as well.

Thanks to Felix Sockwell for the tip.

The background on this will be brief as I lack in German fluency. Namics is a web design and development, and information technology company based in Frankfurt, Germany and from what our generous tipster informs us it is one of the biggest in Europe. They recently launched a new identity, designed by Zurich based firm Heads, that replaces their ambiguous icon for an ever-changing wordmark.

The best part is that the identity is set in… Arial.

Thanks to Adrian Nussbaum for the tip.

Thanks to Chad Kaufman for the tip.

The new logo is nearly identical to the old one, except for a bolder 6, which was surely changed to perform better on all sorts of production techniques. Old logo in blue, new logo overlays in yellow, so anything that's green remains the same.

Thanks to Eric Lohman for first tip.

Mozilla's Firefox seems to hold a place dear in web designers' and developers' hearts as a bastion of open sourceness; to be honest, I'm not the most well versed in these matters so I don't know if there are better open source browser options that have more street cred than Firefox — I'm sure there is some browser in beta called Cucumber (or whatever) that is more hardcore. But I digress. Point is that with Firefox there are no secrets, no here-is-the-latest-thing-and-you-will-like-it, it's all about involving others. And their process to upgrade their huggable, foxy icon to coincide with the release of Firefox 3.5 was no different. Perhaps to an excruciating degree.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, this was excruciating, at least for me and putting myself in Iconfactory's shoes. I can't imagine putting up every two (or four or eight) hours worth of work up for feedback before proceeding. Specially when all the iterations are things that you can decide on your own or in feedback with the client with a simple exchange. Making a big deal out of every iteration is, well, just making a big deal of it. But, definitely, major golf claps for exposing the whole process for everyone to see, I think it's a great exercise.

Old Firefox logo in black and white, with new Firefox logo in color overlaid.

Specially when the changes are so minimal. Looking at the before and after images requires Sherlockian powers of deduction, even more so than with yesterday's Victoria's Secret post. The changes are very subtle and, if you ask me, they are as good as the original intentions of the logo. I can't say it's an improvement because I don't think there wasn't anything in the previous one, merely two years old, that needed 14 iterations to improve. This is simply two ways of rendering a fox over a non-descript globe. You can make it more furry, you can make it less furry. You can have more land, you can have less land. You can have more shine, you can have less shine. Etcetera. Both options are perfectly acceptable. You could even see the inverse exercise, with Jon Hicks coming in in 2009 and fixing Iconfactory's logo from 2007. This isn't a shot to either company, as both icons are perfectly well crafted but it's a clear case of tomato and tomahto. Or, well, fox and fohx.

Thanks to Paul Quinn for first tip.

Let's boil this down to simple facts to get started. Victoria's Secret = Sexy. Trajan = Not Sexy. I assume I do not need to delve into the sexyness of Victoria's Secret and as far as Trajan's lack of sexiness, well, it's really not its fault but its overuse suffered throughout the years. The problem with using Trajan as the logo for Victoria's Secret is that it is no different than, say, Will Smith's I am Legend or a hundred other movie posters. Mucca Design has evolved the logo of Victoria's Secret to something that's more unique and well crafted, taking the basic letterforms of Trajan and finessing them ever so slightly. And amazing how looser tracking adds elegance to small caps.

And, sure, you are welcome to comment with "Consumers will never notice."

Update: From a little birdie on the subject of Trajan vs. Not Trajan. The font is called Victoria and it's been part of Victoria's Secret for a while. It is indeed a modified version of Trajan where they only modified the initial caps of VS, the apostrophe, and thinned some parts of the letters. So, it's not Trajan but, well, it still is Trajan.

Thanks to Tony Nguyen for the tip.

Established in 1957 as The Medical Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts the newly renamed Health Resources in Action has been providing grants for the advancement of public health and medical research. To be honest I had never heard of this organization before — my medical research grant ambitions are rather unambitious — but the new icon definitely caught my attention. There is enough of an abstract story told through it about making connections and the solid bonds created by the grants they make and it is also visually interesting with its unusual angle (it's not 45°! It's not 90°!). The muted colors are something you don't see much of these days either. While I really like the icon, the typography leaves much (much) to be desired, mainly with the tight tracking it has. Certainly the long name does not help, and maybe a in a few years it can be narrowed to its HRIA acronym, which rolls off much better of the tongue than the sentence-like name they chose.

Thanks to Keith Cross for the tip.

My only interaction with Grubb & Ellis, one of the world's largest commercial real estate services, took the form of receiving notices about ongoing construction work around the office of the software company I was working for briefly. I knew what they did, given the information they were providing and the fact that their collateral materials communicated "Property Solutions Worldwide". Certainly the circular icon they were using was rather abstract and nondescript compared to the identifiable bridge in their new mark — although I'm not sure this new icon speaks to what they do. Granted, their offering has diversified through mergers and acquisitions to include management, consulting and investment services, but its unclear how they help one get "From Insights to Results."

The previous slab serif typography used for their wordmark had some uniqueness to it and was well handled, save the unfortunately integrated ampersand and the careless pairing with that pedestrian, transitional serif typeface. The new typography is clean, corporate, humanist and completely forgettable, a definite lost asset in the battle for visual brand equity. The color palette is certainly not your typical corporate palette and has such great potential to stand out amongst many other large company palettes — as evidenced by the Beeline identity handled by these folks. But given the rest of the brand elements I'm not sure Grubb & Ellis intend to use that unconventional palette in an unconventional way.

Thanks to Andy Van Engen for the tip.

Thanks to Dawn H. Buscher for the tip.