Opinion BY Armin

Meet Mr. PIP

Established in 1983, Belkin designs and produces a broad range of consumer electronic products, from routers, to mobile accessories, to a perplexing but always life-saving range of USB and cables — or, as they so eloquently and on-brand put it, “Belkin products connect the dots between people and technology.” To coincide with, CES, the biggest electronic show — and with the return of Belkin founder, Chet Pipkin (pay attention to the name) — Belkin has introduced a new identity designed by Wolff Olins.

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Opinion BY Armin

Asian Art Museum Turned on its Head

First opened in 1966 as a wing of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the Asian Art Museum, now in its own building, is currently one of the largest museums in the Western world devoted exclusively to Asian Art, housing a collection of over 17,000 artworks. It was also one of the most financially troubled museums in the Western world devoted exclusively to Asian Art with a $120 million debt, which was recently announced would be solved, setting the museum up for a much needed reinvention: “Our new brand,” explains Jay Xu, Director of the Asian Art Museum “promises to awaken the past and inspire the next. It means we’ll unlock the past for visitors and bring it to life by sparking connections. We’ll also be a catalyst for new art, new creativity and new thinking.” To help turn things around, literally, the Asian Art Museum worked with Wolff Olins to design its new identity.

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A B-Side BY Armin

Women at NBCU

Launched in 2008, Women at NBCU is an “ad sales, marketing and research initiative [that] creates custom solutions for advertisers to connect with female consumers via NBCUniversal’s wide portfolio.” Logo designed by Wolff Olins. A few more images at Wolff Olins designer Mike Abbink’s website.

Thanks to Marc Nijborg for the tip.

A B-Side BY Armin

Hero MotoCorp

Established in 1984 as a partnership between Japan’s Honda and India’s Hero Group, Hero Honda has grown to be the largest manufacturer and seller of motorcycles in India. This month, with Hero taking over the whole business, the company was renamed Hero MotoCorp. The new logo has been designed by Wolff Olins. Story here.

Opinion BY Armin

Current Lets its Bold Flag Fly

Launched in 2005 by former Vice President Al Gore (before An Inconvenient Truth fame) and entrepreneur Joel Hyatt, Current TV was originally a pretty drastic model of programming, featuring user-generated “pods” reflecting a broad range of topics and opinions that lasted anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes. You could tune in at any time of day and just jump right in into whatever was going on and not have to worry about following typically scheduled programming. This was the same year YouTube launched and before it went as big as it is now, so the concept was fairly ahead of the curve. Current gathered some initial attention but then it just kind of disappeared as the novelty wore off and despite hiring former MTV Networks’ President Mark Rosenthal, toying with the idea of going public, and transitioning into 30- and 60-minute programming Current felt anything but. Enter Keith Olbermann, the love-him-or-hate-him, ex-ESPN anchor turned political commentator. In February Current announced that Olbermann would be taking his show, Countdown With Keith Olbermann, from MSNBC to their cable channel starting June 20. Reminiscent of when Howard Stern announced he would be leaving the broader air waves for SiriusXM, Olbermann’s move to Current gave it instant relevance. Last week, Current quietly introduced a new look, launched the website for Olbermann’s show, Countdown, and over the Summer will be implementing the new look. The identity has been designed by Wolff Olins with motion assistance by Ghava, the on-air look is by loyalkaspar, and web design by Code and Theory.

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Follow-Up BY Armin

Follow-Up: Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art

Funny how things work out: On Friday of last week, same day as the Brand New Awards judging, we published the Mathaf identity design by Wolff Olins. I published it hesitantly because the images and explanations found online were very scarce, Clinton did a very good job in cobbling together a review based on that, so I went with it. Although Wolff Olins’ entry had arrived at the office earlier in the week I hadn’t had a chance to leaf through it. It was until Friday, when the judges were discussing it, that I was able to see the extent of the identity. When they selected it as Best of Show I was bummed that the post we had about it was not representative of the work. Now that the Mathaf identity has a brighter spotlight on it, I’m very pleased to be able to show some of the images in the entry so that you can see what the judges saw. In Friday’s post we had also wrongly attributed the custom typeface to Tarek Atrissi Design — they were responsible for the hand-drawn type shown here now in its completion, and the thin, mono weight typeface was designed by Pascal Zoghbi from 29ArabicLetters.

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Opinion BY Clinton Duncan

Typography: Where East Meets West

Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art (pronounced mat-haf) is a new modern art museum in Doha, Qatar. Its mission is to showcase modern and contemporary art from the region, shifting existing perceptions of arts practice in the Arab world, and provide a forum for dialogue and scholarship. An existing building, in the traditional style, was redesigned by French architect Jean-François Bodin and the new branding was handled by the Dubai office of Wolff Olins with two custom typefaces, one by Tarek Atrissi Design and another by Pascal Zoghbi from 29ArabicLetters.

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Opinion BY Armin

The NBC Peacock is Gone and Rightfully So

In 2004 General Electric, the parent company of American television network NBC, purchased 80% of Vivendi Universal Entertainment, the parent company of Universal Pictures, cable channels like USA Network and Syfy (then Sci-Fi Channel), and the Universal Studios theme parks. NBC Universal was born. A powerful entertainment company with major real estate on television: NBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Syfy, USA Network, A&E, MSNBC, and CNBC among others. In 2009, cable operator Comcast announced its plans to purchase a stake in NBC Universal and as of last week, with approval of the Federal Communications Commission and U.S. Department of Justice, Comcast now owns 51% of NBC Universal, while General Electric owns 49%. On Friday, at an employee town hall meeting, Steve Burke, COO of Comcast and CEO of the new company, announced a new name, NBCUniversal (no space, thank you), and a new logo designed by Wolff Olins.

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Announcement BY Armin

Ask Wolff Olins

For the Brand New Conference this coming November, Jordan Crane (creative director) and Karl Heiselman (CEO) of Wolff Olins will put together a presentation based on your questions. So… What would you ask Wolff Olins? And be nice!

Opinion BY Armin

PricewaterhouseCoopersWasALongName

The clearest picture I have of what PricewaterhouseCoopers does is of two dudes in tuxedos holding a briefcase with the envelopes that announce the winners at the Oscars. But, clearly, with 163,000 employees in 151 countries they do more than that. They are one of the “Big Four” professional services firms — the three others are Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young, and KPMG — and boast gross revenues of 26.2 billion USD (fiscal year 2009). Officially, they “provide industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to enhance value for their clients.” Yesterday was the official announcement that PricewaterhouseCoopers would be changing its name to PwC, keeping the mouthful of a name as the full name of the global organization for legal purposes. PwC also introduced a new identity created by the London office of Wolff Olins.

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Opinion BY Armin

MapQuest comes Alive

Back in September of 2008 we reported on the evolution of the MapQuest logo and the feeling of the majority was that it was too little too late to make up ground against Google Maps — two years later, MapQuest is betting that it’s not too late with a complete overhaul of their identity and their mapping experience. As a subsidiary of AOL, MapQuest will be integrating the local brainpower provided by its sibling service, Patch; you can read the full details of what MapQuest is setting out to do in their blog. The new identity has been designed by Wolff Olins.

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Opinion BY Armin

Follow-up: AOL, Round 2

Six months after rebooting their identity and to coincide with their 25th anniversary celebrations, AOL has unleashed its “2nd Collection” of logos and animations with help from designers, illustrators and animators around the world, with direction by Wolff Olins. To consolidate this effort, AOL has launched AOL Artists, a repository of all the contributors and snippets of their work, a fairly generous move to acknowledge these artists’ work and give them some additional exposure. AOL Artists also introduces “Project on Creativity,” a year-long celebration that highlights one creative icon — Chuck Close being the inaugural one — and also awards twenty-five scholarships, each of $25,000, to upcoming talent. Finally, a new corporate site for AOL is now live.

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