Another major corporate rebrand announced - this time it’s Capital One, who are practically giddy over their new logo. Nasty. This kind of swoosh logo may have been all internetty and forward-thinking circa 1999, but at the beginning of 2008, this certainly qualifies for the ‘WTF Were They Thinking?” department. This new design is forty miles of rough design road and dated before it’s official roll-out late Feb. Internally, the new logo is referred to as the boomerang, and was selected by the CEO from a wide range of choices. Looks like a design that could have been peeled of any one of those $50 logo template sites and missed this particular design trend by oh, eight or nine years. We get it folks - you have a web site. The bastard son of a Nike logo doesn’t make that point any clearer.

Xerox recently announced that they were changing their corporate logo, dropping the famous ‘X’ icon for the swishy, chromy, X-boxy design seen here. Richard Wergan, vice president of advertising, calls the new design “a brand identity that reflects the Xerox of today.” I don’t mind it, especially when you find out that the new mark was developed with animation in mind, and is an attempt to connect all the various bits and pieces of the giant corporation together. Xerox are no longer just in the copier business, and hope the new brand establishes that. Interbrand, the advertising agency arm of Omnicom Group, spent more than 18 months interviewing some 5,000 people about their attachments with the Xerox name. The new mark was designed to retain the positive aspect Xerox stands for (dependability and stability), while tossing the not-so-positive (formal, somewhat old-school). Most important aspect of the new design was that is scream modern, innovative and flexible. Is the new logo successful? I think so - though only time, and consumer acceptance, will really tell. Design community reviews have been less kind - likening it to the Microsoft X-Box logo, referring to Xerox as a very, shiny, shiny company, and even complaining that the design is a rip from the new Kyrgyz Republic flag, albeit with a twist (no, I haven’t a clue where it is either). All boils down to can’t please all the people, all the time, I guess. Though I wonder how long before our InstaLogo pals try to sell this one (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

I’m generally loathe to dole out unsolicited critiques of other logos (especially when they’re not so kind) - I have no way of knowing the background design process, how much ‘tinkering’ the well-intentioned client performed, etc. Having said that, there are the odd times when I’m willing to make an exception, and the old (but still currently in use) logo for The Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce is one of them. While I guess if M. C. Escher was alive today, this is something he might come up with, the rubick cube-esque design is a classic example of what happens when somebody tries to be too clever by half, and in doing so forgets the actual mission - designing a logo that reflects the company involved. Particularly when we’re talking about financial logos. And while I certainly appreciate the graphic gymnastics that create the optical illusion of the mark, there’s so much wrong with this piece as a logo that it almost defies description. It’s certainly not an effective depiction of a user-friendly chamber of commerce. More like a design for a sci-fi movie, The Chamber, where hapless victims are trapped in an ever changing maze of geometric shapes. Come to think of it, this design would have been perfect as a poster for the indie move The Cube - a flick that closely parallels the plot I’ve just outlined. Even members were confused - “They think it’s a Rubik’s Cube or a complicated chamber of secrets that you can’t get in or get out. They didn’t get it,” said Shannon McNett-Silcox, The Chamber’s vice president of member relations.” Thankfully, the logo has been reworked with the new mark, created by Fort Wayne-based Brand Innovation Group and unveiled last Thursday, is supposed to “incorporate four pillars, which represent the Chamber’s primary efforts: government and community affairs, air service development, workforce/ business development and membership development”. The new logo isn’t great, but a vast improvement over the existing one. Probably why it was greeted with “cheers of appreciation”. Hat tip to the Journal Gazette.

Toy store chain giant, Toys R Us, has began to roll out their new logo makeover to mostly positive reviews from design blogs and forums. While I’m certainly not an advocate of changing a logo simply for giggles, overall I like the reworking of the mark. The backwards ‘R’ is still there (thankfully) but it’s been enlarged with the old star motif added to the letter rather than the color field featured in the old style. The font work has been tightened up, while retaining most of the old character, and the colors have been ‘nuanced’ to a more natural palette. If I was looking at the bottom line, as opposed to the design itself, I might be convinced to question if the enormous expense of the re-brand justifies the rather subtle re-tooling. But then again, I’m not a suit, so I won’t. Never one to miss a blatant plug opportunity, I’d also like to point out that we’ve developed a lot of toy store & company logos over the years…

Italian car group Lancia relaunches its visual identity this week to mark the company’s centenary. The new-look badge has been drawn by Italian design consultancy Robilant Associati. The agency collaborated with the group’s in-house team at Lancia’s design centre in Turin to update the logo, which comes ahead of the brand’s return to the UK next year.

Ice cream parlour giant Baskin - Robbins lend their name to the increasingly long list of corporations that have thrown their logo into the redux ring. Alas, I’d argue that the new logo is not an improvement. The old B & R logo (apparently still used as a secondary logo) had a certain ‘heritage’ to it - reminiscent of ice cream parlors in Norman Rockwell paintings. It also incorporated the famous 31 flavors - a pivotal piece of the company’s brand - very prominently into the mix (the theory behind the 31 is one flavor for every day of the month). The new logo (known inside the corp as the ‘fun logo’) is a little higgeldy piggeldy (a technical term) and has a rather ‘childish’ theme with ‘pointy’ font work and a noticeably downplayed ‘31 flavors’ motif (squint - it makes up the B & R in the center. Yeah - it’s clever. But effective? Nuh uh). Perhaps appealing to kids (and subsequently families) was the point, though I’d argue that the conservative older version appeals to families just fine. Now, whether this has anything to do with Baskin-Robbins (along with Dunkin’ Donuts) purchase by defence and aerospace giant The Carlyle Group is anyones’ guess…