The wrangle of the P’s has now reached legal heights as Paypal announces its suing Pandora.
Browsing: logo
It’s no secret that MediaWorks had a tough year in 2015, with major changes in its current affairs lineup provoking ire among both industry commentators and viewers and declining ratings for some of its big reality TV shows making things tough commercially. But it’s hoping a new year signals new beginnings, and the media company is kicking off 2016 with a new logo.
Chromesthesia describes situations in which hearing certain sounds automatically evokes—in the words of Wikipedia—an experience of a colour. This is one of the rare examples in which a person is able to see a sound, giving something that is intangible to the eye a corporeal representation. But the isolation of the senses also goes the other way, in that the concept of sounds—in particular music—is not necessarily easy to capture in the visual form. For companies in the music industry, this limitation has until now meant that their logos could not necessarily embody the sounds that they sell. Wireless audio company Sonos has however managed to bridge the gap with its new logo.
Adobe came up with a creative way to deconstruct its logo and you wouldn’t expect anything less from a company that makes products all about creativity. Adobe Lights was a project which brought the pixels made by 100 artists globally to life in coloured blocks.
Kono is already exporting its wares to 25 countries, but the Nelson-based Wakatū Incorporation’s food and beverage business arm is hoping to increase that number—and its exports to Asia—after being given a big brand spruce up by Wellington agency Mission Hall.
Local brand and marketing company Tuskany Agency last week unveiled its new vision and strategy for downtown Tauranga, including a new logo (which at first glance seems reminisce of the Microsoft logo) and the positioning statement: “Locals. Love it!”. But when it comes to the actual logo and slogan itself —as seems to be the inevitable case in almost every brand redesign— not everyone actually loves it.
There’s something about logos that seems to spike people’s interest. The new Z Energy logo is testament to that and now it’s the turn of Sealord to show off its new corporate identity, unveiling it at the annual Maori Fisheries Conference in Nelson on Monday.
I recently read a great article in The Economist about Starbucks’ decision to remove the words ‘Starbucks’ and ‘coffee’ and also the circle around the siren from the logo. As the writer says, there are relatively few brands that are recognised purely by a logo—think Nike, Adidas, Playboy, McDonald’s and Apple. So it’s part of the evolution of a super brand to announce itself as such an integral part of our lives that words are no longer needed. The company now transcends the product itself, which tends to be tied in to the fact that it can now start selling things it wasn’t traditionally associated with. And for Starbucks, this means alcohol and various beverage accessories.
There’s almost nothing you opinionated marcomms folk love more than passing judgment on a new logo and the Media Design School’s bright and explosive brand makeover is quite the departure from its former black and white identity.
I’m always reluctant to get into discussions about logos because I don’t think I’m overly qualified to talk about them (and because everyone else thinks they are overly qualified to talk about them). Generally, those that bleat the most about logos are those that know the least about marketing; the ones who think branding is a sticker you put on an apple before you export it to Japan. But I feel the need to make a wee exception.
The process of makeovers isn’t always pretty, as the plethora of road cones that have littered the surrounding streets of Eden Park during its redevelopment are testament to. But while it may have not been such a pretty affair on the outside, it’s a different story on the inside, as those attending the unveiling of the new look park this Sunday will see. The makeover includes a new look ground and revitalised logo, all set to “put on a distinctively New Zealand face” for the half a million visitors expected to visit the park over the course of the Rugby World Cup.
It was less than two years ago that BNZ released its cute, fluffy, cloud-like logo into the wild. Some thought it was fresh, different and looked like toothpaste. Others thought it was too fresh, too different and too toothpastey and, therefore, lacked history and gravitas. And it seems the BNZ brand boffins agreed with the latter, because it’s gone back to its astronomical roots and changed its logo again, adding the classic Southern Cross back in, reducing the fluffiness and chopping that cheeky vestigial tail off the B.
So, we got what we expected from the Super City logo competition: a rather staid, traditional, old fashioned, unimaginative mark that looks like the old Regional Parks emblem. From the Super City I wanted a logo that expresses the modern, dynamic, diverse, creative, vibrant, commercial city that is Auckland. And I don’t get that from this.
What is Auckland Super City thinking? As we in the design world have always thought, everyone is a designer, so why not throw a competition out to all New Zealanders and get them to design a random logo for the country’s commercial centre. That’ll give us international credibility. Yeah right!
With all the hoopla that has surrounded the new Supercity (and let’s face it, it has not been all good hoopla by any shot), it seemed like a smart idea on the part of the Auckland Transition Agency to invite a disgruntled Auckland population to play a creative role in their city’s new future identity, by creating the new Supercity logo. But while budding (and perhaps not so budding) artists put their creative hands to task, one group is creating not a logo, but a fuss. The Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ) has spoken out against the competition today, saying they are both disappointed and concerned that the design profession was not consulted on a matter of such importance.
Nickelodeon NZ has released a new logo to replace the “historical splat”, with new livery launching on-air, on-line and in all off-air marketing collateral. And the Nick brand police are obviously on high alert, chasing down transgressors who don’t follow its very strict, specific, capitalised and unintentionally entertaining logo guidelines.
ANZ’s new global brand identity has already had an airing in Indonesia, Australia and other parts of Asia. But we’ll have to wait a while for the external rollout in New Zealand (and the inevitable discussions about how good it is and how much it cost).
Telecom said their new whatchamacallit logo could literally be anything we wanted it to be. They told us, in rather non-committal fashion, it was our job to attach meaning. And attach meaning we did. Some thought it was expressive, floral and energetic. Some thought it was an “arseterisk”. Some thought …
Do you think the new Countdown/Woolies “W” logo looks like an apple? Go figure. Apple certainly thinks so, and has launched a legal campaign to stop the Australian company from using it.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported Woolworths filed a trademark application last August and will plaster the logo …