A B-Side BY Armin

News Life Media

Formerly News Magazines, News Life Media is one of Australia’s largest print and online publishers with renown magazine brands like Vogue and GQ. The new logo to reflect the new name was designed by gen.a.

Opinion BY Armin

I’ll Toast to That. Not.

Established in 1924, Toastmasters International (TI) is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills. TI currently has more than 270,000 members in over 13,000 clubs in 116 countries. Among its notable alumni are actors Leonard Nimoy and Tim Allen, but it helps people in any profession and walk of life to gain competence in communication that, in turn, gives them the confidence to lead others. In August TI introduced a new identity, the first change in 70 years.

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A B-Side BY Armin

Disney Vacation Club

The Disney Vacation Club is a membership program for people who purchase real estate interest in a Disney Vacation Club Resort and build points based on the size of the real estate interest as well as vacations taken to Disney places. A new logo, featuring DIN of all things (nothing says Disney like German transportation signage), was introduced earlier this month. The Disney Parks blog has the story.

Thanks to Andrew D. Lewandowski for the tip.

Opinion BY Armin

Global Weave

Established in 1965 in New York as the Foundation for the South Pacific (FSP) by an Australian actress named Elizabeth Silverstein and a Marist Priest named Stanley Hosie, the nonprofit organization focused initially on helping the island nations of the South Pacific rebuild after World War II. Renamed Counterpart International (CI) in 1992 after bringing its mission — “to empower people to implement innovative and enduring solutions to social, economic and environmental challenges” — to aid after the fall of the Soviet Union. Since then, with over 300 people currently on staff and now headquartered in Arlington, VA, it has helped people in 65 countries in three key areas: economic development, food security and nutrition, and building effective governance and institutions. This month CI introduced a new identity designed by Seattle, WA-based Kite.

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A B-Side BY Armin

RockMelt

Rockmelt is a new web browser that integrates social networking with all the amenities of a modern browser. Rockmelt is backed by the venture firm of Marc Andressen, he of Netscape co-founding fame.

Via @WolffOlins.

A B-Side BY Armin

Big Fish Games

Founded in 2002 in Seattle, WA, Big Fish Games produces its own line of video games that can be played online or as an app on the iPhone and iPad. Their logo evolution came in the Summer of 2010, but that fish is too adorable and that type too chunky to leave un-posted. A bigger view and a shot of the sign installation after the jump.

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A B-Side BY Armin

Eniro

Eniro is “the Nordic region’s largest search company. Both consumers and companies can use Eniro’s services to easily locate where to buy services and products — regardless of whether the channel is internet, catalog or mobile.”

Thanks to Anders Landström for the tip.

Opinion BY Armin

Global Splat

Founded in 1972, PRISA (Promotora de Informaciones, S.A — Information Promoter, Inc.) is “the world’s leading Spanish and Portuguese-language business group in the fields of education, information and entertainment.” Based in Madrid, Spain, PRISA is present in 22 countries and handles important publishing enterprises like El País, Spain’s leading general interest newspaper, and publishing houses Santillana and Alfaguara. Additionally, PRISA publishes major magazines like Rolling Stone and Cinemanía, runs over a dozen radio stations, and a handful of TV channels. Over the weekend, PRISA made the announcement that Liberty Acquisition Holdings, a New York-based investment company will provide $1.2 billion to the company and in return it will get majority ownership, helping PRISA come out of a $6.2 billion debt. Corporate rebrandings are perfect for signaling a positive outlook moving forward and PRISA has done just that.

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Opinion BY Armin

Internet Explorer Version Who Cares?.0

A long time ago, like, totally, in the 1990s the de facto browsers were Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Netscape, the equivalent of today’s Safari and Firefox. The latter in both cases had more geek cred, while the former had better looks. Back in those days I always chose IE, mostly because the broken image icon of Netscape was far more scary. At the turn of the century as browser competition increased, IE’s stronghold on the market dipped deeper than the Titanic and has become not just a source of frustration for programmers who need to concoct hacks to make things work specifically for IE, but it’s also a sad punchline. They even managed to completely alienate the growing Mac population by discontinuing development for that platform in 2003. Microsoft is hoping that IE9 and its commitment to CSS3, Web Open Font Format and HTML5 will bring back some glory when it is released sometime in 2011; it is currently in beta testing. As an aside: According to our stats, 10% of our readers are on IE, and 1% of that 10% is beta testing IE9. All the images in this post have been pulled from a comprehensive blog post at IE Blog.

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Opinion BY Armin

The World, Underlined

Founded in 1987, Conservation International (CI) is an organization with 900-plus employees across more than thirty global offices. Its mission is to build “upon a strong foundation of science, partnership and field demonstration, [to empower] societies to responsibly and sustainably care for nature, our global biodiversity, for the well-being of humanity.” CI has partnered with companies like Starbucks, Patagonia and Walmart and works with government bodies to achieve its mission. Earlier this month, as CI announced plans to expand its scope and scale of work, it introduced a new identity designed by Chermayeff & Geismar.

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Opinion BY Armin

The Pulse Felt Around the World

In July of 2009 Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, announced plans to launch the Global Impact and Vulnerability Alert System (GIVAS), in order to “mobilize our full strength for better real-time data on the impact of the economic crisis on the poorest nations.” In June, almost a year later, GIVAS changed its name to Global Pulse, citing that the acronym was hard to pronounce, the name too long to remember, and it signified a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach. Global Pulse’s vision is to “Close the information gap between the onset of a global crisis and the availability of actionable information for decision makers” and its mission to “Harness innovation to protect the vulnerable.” To accompany the launch of the new name, New York-based Zago created a new identity.

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Opinion BY Armin

Crystal Ball Says What?

Around the world, the adage applies that all roads lead to Rome, but in the state of New York, all roads lead to a SUNY (State University of New York) campus. With over 460,000 enrolled students across 64 campuses, SUNY is the biggest conglomerate of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States, if not the world. Keeping the organization unified and focused must be a massive effort and sometimes it requires bold and far-reaching initiatives to keep things moving, so this month SUNY presented “The Power of SUNY,” a strategic plan for 2010 and beyond that establishes the scope of what SUNY wants to achieve. Along with it, came a new logo.

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