Opinion BY Armin

Attack of the Red Gradients

Established in 1976, EDP (Energias de Portugal) is not just the largest electricity and energy company in Portugal but also a major player globally with presence in Spain, Brazil, and the U.S. with more than 12,000 employees worldwide. It’s also the third largest wind operator in the world. Last week EDP unveiled a new identity designed by Sagmeister Inc.

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Opinion BY Clinton Duncan

E-A-D-S Spells B-E-V-E-L-S

EADS or the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, was born from the merger of the German DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG, French Aérospatiale-Matra and Spanish Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (CASA), creating a company spanning the industries of, well, as the name rather plainly suggests, Aeronautics (aeroplanes), Defence (things that go boom) and Space (satellites, rockets, space craft). It’s the Aeronautics division, branded as Airbus, that we would all be most familiar with, but EADS also brands its various hi-tech creations Eurocopter, Cassidian, Astrian and Dassault. Airbus has been the focus of most reactions to the rebrand, delivered by London-based Lambie Nairn, and it’s this business unit that seems to have lost the most in the rebranding exercise.

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Opinion BY Armin

San Diego Zoo Gets Funky

Founded in 1916 the San Diego Zoo is one of the largest in the world, with “over 4,000 rare and endangered animals representing more than 800 species and subspecies” including a delicious (looking not tasting) panda. The San Diego Zoo, as a parent brand and non-profit organization, also operates the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park, and San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research, and counts with more than 250,000 member households and 130,000 child memberships. Despite being all part of the same family, each entity had its own identity and it wasn’t clear that they were all fighting the same fight: Conservation. The San Diego Zoo has just introduced a new identity created by Landor that unifies the full San Diego Zoo organization under one visual identity and brand idea, “Ambassadors for Wildlife,” which grew out of the new tagline, “Wild at Heart.”

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Opinion BY Armin

Gran Branding for Gran Turismo

This year marked the first season of the FIA GT1 World Championship, a global event sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and promoted by the Stéphane Ratel Organisation (SRO). And GT, for those as oblivious to car terms as me, stands for Gran Turismo (in Italian) or Grand Touring (in English), which are race cars that are based on standard production road cars, and conform to strict GT1 regulations. The FIA GT1 event brings together “Six iconic brands Aston Martin, Corvette, Ford, Lamborghini, Maserati, Nissan” to a race that features “12 teams, 24 cars and 48 of the world’s leading drivers [competing] on 10 of the leading circuits on four continents.” London-based Interstate Associates, a firm with plenty of motor sport work experience, produced a comprehensive identity for the championship.

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INTL. REVIEW BY Simon Wennberg POSTED BY Brand New

Who Let the Butterflies Out?

European broadcasters tend to place much focus on the brand of their respective parent corporation, which usually acts as an umbrella brand for all their outlets. This is very different from the American broadcasters where every network seems to be its own operation with loose branding ties within corporations (think MTV, VH1, etc. within Viacom). One weird aspect of the European model is that every once in a while the corporation makes a change in its identity which is then implemented on all its services. This means a sudden burst of rebrands of several television channels that either happen at once or over the course of a limited time-period. One recent example of this is Rai — short for Radiotelevisione Italiana, a state-owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance — which suddenly decided to give all its 13 channels new looks on May 18.

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