Established in 1943, the National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA) aims to "help members of the U.S. precision custom manufacturing industry achieve profitable growth and business success in a global economy through advocacy, advice, education, networking, information, programs and services." Citing a misunderstanding of American manufacturing as being in trouble, NTMA wants to make sure everyone understands that is not the case and that this community is thriving. With 50 chapters across the U.S., NTMA counts with nearly 2,000 members — "members" are counted as businesses not individuals — covering industries "from aerospace to electronics to nuclear power." The new identity was designed by Atlanta, GA-based Matchstic.

Old materials.

The new brand mark is an evolution of the previous logo, refined and updated. We retained some defining characteristics — the color and shape — but recast it in a richer shade of blue with custom lettering. The new identity reflects experience and precision.
— Matchstic Case Study

I was almost going to say that the old logo wasn't that bad — in that un-logo-less, inoffensive way — but then I saw that the "T" ate the serifs of the "N" and "M" next to it. I got offended. The old logo could have been for any non-profit whatsoever and didn't reflect any kind of allusion to manufacturing. The new logo looks like it has been manufactured and chiseled with a precision machine and in the full-color application with the shine and shadows it looks like a badge that could go on the grill of a car or the door of a refrigerator. The logo is now much more appropriate and relevant, although it's certainly not the best thing since the Industrial Revolution. On first instinct I want to like it, there is something blunt and industrial about it that catches my attention, but on the details and execution it doesn't quite hold up: What does the diagonal line mean? If the angle of the "N" matches that line, why wouldn't the notches in the "T" and "M" match too? Why is the crossbar in the "A" so short? Why is there so little space after the "A"? One more round of refinement and customization would have yielded a stronger logo.

The logo placement feels unresolved throughout in the rest of the identity but somehow it strikes a good balance of being contemporary and having a blue collar look and feel. The use of OCR-A, always a hard trick to pull off, works well used sparingly. Overall, an improvement for sure, but it just needed a little extra kick to take it to the next level.

Established in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1983 and originally known as The Rainbow Society, the newly renamed The Dream Factory is "a charitable organization dedicated to fulfilling the once-in-a-lifetime dreams of Manitoba children suffering from life threatening illnesses." Focusing its efforts on children from Manitoba, The Dream Factory has helped over 530 children in the past 19 years — Make-A-Wish Foundation, the biggest organization in this category, has helped 212,000 kids since 1980, just as a point of reference. This past November, The Rainbow Society changed its name to The Dream Factory and introduced a new identity designed by Winnipeg-based Cocoon Branding.

Logo in one and full color.

I mentioned the Make-A-Wish Foundation because when I first saw the new identity, before reading anything about the The Dream Factory, I assumed this was a large, national organization helping thousands of kids a year, much like Make-A-Wish. That's a significant thing for an identity to do. I was surprised to see it was a small organization, which the old logo supported and didn't do it any favors in making it look like a solid organization nor did it make any allusions whatsoever to what it did.

The new logo and identity aren't perfect but they make an immediate statement that is relevant and uplifting. I really like the concept of the airship and building its balloon from the word Dream. There is a slight disconnect between that bold typography and the thin script used for "The" and "factory" and those sit a little too close to the blue stroke. The ship part of the logo is downright adorable, it just looks like a little-train-that-could, pulling at that big balloon. Even the way it's positioned and rotated you can read into it that it's like the children they help, optimistically pushing forward.

The rest of the identity is nice and playful, I even like the blue to cream gradient, but the typography in the business cards and even on the website lacks the sophistication and attention to detail that the logo has. A few less type-on-a-curve and a better typeface selection would improve this plenty. Overall, a great redesign and renaming.

Stationery and business card detail.

The pop-up corporate folder became a highlight piece to be given to dream children and prospective donors. This folder will often be the first connection that the brand will have, and needed to hold the essence of the organization as well as keep the aspect of the surreal feeling of a dream. A pop-up book was the perfect vehicle for this. The pop-up also holds the various collateral that the folder will need to carry.

Behind the scenes video.

Please excuse this brief identity-reviewing interruption so that we self-promote on our own blog. This has nothing to do with logos, brands, or identities but we figure that with so many readers on Brand New there is a good chance that many of you are moms or dads, aunts or uncles, or even grandpas and grandmas, so… Our latest project at UnderConsideration headquarters is The Adventures of You and I, a one-of-a-kind children book, customized on demand to each kid, printed individually, and hand-bound. Illustrated by my wife and partner Bryony and written with all the silliness of a 5-year-old by me.

Established in 1997 in Portland, OR, Oni Press is a small-ish independent comic books publisher known and respected for its innovative and out of the mainstream titles, including the popular Scott Pilgrim series as well as more nerdy ventures like bringing to comic book life Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen character. In Japanese folklore Oni refers to demons and devils and their logo originally featured an Oni trinket illustrated by Watchmen's Dave Gibbons. The new logo was updated in-house and released last week.

The original logo looked quite a lot like an independent comic book publisher should look and even though I don't like the typography one bit nor the way the logo is locked up in that odd holding shape, the thing was appropriate — plus, not everyone can boast of having a Dave Gibbons-designed icon. The new logo is a nice evolution of it, with the Oni redrawn to look more aggressive and less with a "Oh my God, I wonder what lies behind that 'D' sticker in the DC Comics logo?!" look. The extra tight cropping also gives it an air of mystery and creates a lot of tension in the logo. The typography, though, is a bit of a mess. The "ONI" square lettering is a little flimsy, too tightly spaced, and not very imaginative nor representative of indie comics — pairing it with ultra spaced Helvetica below it doesn't help at all. Perhaps a cliché, the logo is held within a speech bubble, but at least the hard-edged execution of it doesn't make it so evident or cloying. Overall, this was a great icon redesign but the typography could use a refinement, or twelve.

Thanks to Matt Rower for first tip.

This Friday, February 3, 2012 is the last day for taking advantage of the early-bird pricing for the Brand New Awards. Prices will go up on Saturday. Drop-dead deadline will be March 2, 2012.

All entries so far have been submitted electronically — looks like this is a popular method and it's been working nicely. If we made your lives any easier than this we would be picking up your laundry.

Joining the NFL as an expansion team in 1995, the Carolina Panthers have a total record of 131 wins and 150 losses and have even made it to the Super Bowl (XXXVIII in Houston) in which they lost to the New England Patriots. Over the weekend, which happened to be Pro Bowl weekend, the Panthers introduced a new logo designed by the NFL's creative department.

Old panther on top, new panther on bottom.

The logo makes its apparel debut at the Pro Bowl with these "Vapor Jet Gloves" by Nike. Funny that they already put back a white outline around it — so much for the press release.

The typography in the old logo was almost comical, but amazingly representative of our Grunge upbringing of the mid- to late 1990s. The panther icon wasn't that bad, although it didn't pull off the aggressive floating-animal-head execution as good as other team logos. The newest rendition, which smartly keeps the panther icon as is, is considerably a vast improvement. The features of the panther are much more defined and even though there are more vectors per square inch than before, the panther is simpler. Not sure why they didn't make the eyes and teeth white instead of gray, because it looks like he could use a good teeth brushing. I do like how they've paired down on the amount of strokes and even though I sarcastically mentioned the white stroke on the glove image above, it's clear that on dark backgrounds it needs it, but it's way better than the triple stroke the old one needed.

The new wordmark is not my thing, but I think it's pretty effective and the 2012 equivalent of the 1995 airbrush-ey wordmark. Someone had fun putting all those speedy serifs and notches in the letters, that's for sure. I don't think the scratch in the Panthers' "A" is evident enough, it's a nice detail, but perhaps the idea could have been pushed a little more with the scratch screeching its way left to the "P". Overall, this should move a good deal of new merchandise.

Thanks to James I. Bowie for first tip.

Cincinnati, Ohio-based identity designer Adam Ladd asked his 5-year-old daughter her impressions on some popular logos — my favorite is her response to the Republican Party logo. This is both adorable and some of the best and most authentic field research out there.

Established in 1878 in London, Ontario Canada, The University of Western Ontario is one of the largest universities in Canada with over 25,000 undergraduate and graduate students combined and more than 1,300 faculty. Last week they announced a change to their brand name, to Western University, and introduced a new identity designed by Toronto-based Hahn Smith Design and execution of the crest and typography by local type craftsman Ian Brignell.

Identity introduction. Makes good points and is a helpful summary if you can stomach the touchscreen interface metaphor.

Original coat of arms on which the new logo is based.

A summary page on the new identity, explaining the elements of the shield and other things, can be found here.

It baffles me that the old logo was actually the logo of a large and respected university. Whoever filtered that tower in Photoshop should have their graphic designing license revoked — or at least their Adobe serial number canceled. So pretty much anything would have been an improvement. And the new logo is. In a boring, institutional, traditional, coat-of-arms way. I mean, universities are consistently redesigning their way out of shield logos into more contemporary ideas, not adopting them in the second decade of the twenty-first century. As the quote says above, this isn't radical and the intention was clearly to signal tradition and history, and the shield and typography are finely executed but there is nothing here we haven't seen in the last 50 or 75 years of higher education identity design. The redesign is so ho-hum that I wasn't considering posting it at all, but when I get upwards of 15 or 20 tips for any identity I do feel obliged to post for those somehow invested or related… Sorry, folks, ya'll deserved a more interesting identity.

Thanks to Christopher Rouleau for firs tip.