Feb

A most awesome logo symbolism manifesto, bananas & some random logo design stuff edition

Steve Douglas on February 24th, 2010

Speaking of logo porn, have to lift a pint to the good folks at the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute for the most over-the-top, unabashed logo symbolism manifesto in the history of logo symbolism manifestos. Usually these “what our logo means” diatribes fall into the “who writes this shit?” category, but not this one. While a “we kinda cribbed the triangle thingy from the dollar bill” might have sufficed for lesser mortals, the full-page explanation of their logo and the amount of symbolism they’ve managed to squeeze into one fairly innocuous icon (below) is nothing short of divinely inspired prose. Pretty much the stuff of legends. Lessee – the eye is supposed to conjure up ancient Egypt, Medieval cultures in both Europe and Asia, the Masons and of course, The Great Seal. It also represents “perspective” and a “mission to see what is as well as what can be, and our intent to apply wisdom and understanding to America’s challenges“. Ooooaah. The star (apparently The North Star) symbolizes “direction” and a “mission of finding a path to our solutions“. It also symbolizes “constancy, the diversity of our nation, and how keeping an eye on what’s important can guide us to new opportunities as well as guide us home, keeping us connected to our core principles and values“. Reaching for a cigarette yet? And oh yeah, the star’s also pinched from the USA flag and thus represents Every. State. In. The. Union. Nice one. As there’s a whole bunch of countries that also use red and blue in their flags, the color scheme represents pretty much the entire world (except those with flag colors other than red and blue I guess). Anyhoo, the manifesto goes on, and on, with more at the link. Lots more. [Hat tip: Panoply]

Speaking of pints (snark-free this time) gotta tip one towards the folks at Design Related for giving us a wonderful look behind the scenes of the recent Chiquita Banana brand ‘refresh’. For a designer, especially those interested in branding and all things logo, there’s nothing quite as inspiring at seeing, and reading, about a design gig that manages to fulfill its mandate so damn well. DR do just that with a terrific interview with the art director, DJ Neff, picking his brain about how he went about making bananas well, fun, fun, fun (’till Daddy takes the T-bird away). Go now and read it all. Lots of pics of the sticker-driven campaign, some cool links and some outtakes of the nifty characters that make up the rebranding, all nestled inside a great read. This one’s near and dear to my heart, with sliced bananas on toast (nothing less than three toast) just happening to be my fave breakfast food. In fact, I’m munching on some now. [Design Related]

Stock logo site Brandstack would like to clear the air about their upcoming service Upstack so they have. In a feature called, oddly enough, Clearing the air about Upstack. First of all, Upstack is not anything like what people are saying it is, especially when people say that it’s just another spec site or logo mill. In fact, Brandstack would like us to know that nothing has been done like Upstack in the history of ever. Even when Logoworks did it back in the day because they’re a logo mill and Upstack isn’t, only that Logoworks sez they’re not a logo mill either offering brochures, websites and other stuff that logo mills don’t. And oh yeah, this will all work out ’cause the people at Brandstack are “brilliant“. [Brandstack]

Looks like the Girl Scouts of NYPENN Pathways are looking for a new logo. And like almost everyone looking for a new logo these days, they opted to go the old logo-design-contest-crowdsourcy route. Not gonna bitch though. This kind of participatory contest is actually a pretty cool way for actual Girl Scouts to toss their creative hats into the ring. You know, community vibe kinda deal. Confidence building and all that. Hell, as a Cub Scout (not now, back in the day) I’d have been thrilled to design a logo for my “pack”. Wassthat? The organization that’s running the contest wants everyone to know that it’s open to “non-Girl Scouts, girls and adults” as well? Spiffy. Guess that’s the “community vibe” out the window (not to mention telegraphing a lack of faith in honest-to-goodness Girl Scouts coming up with the design themselves). The goal of this contest is to develop a “unifying logo that can be used as a council patch, on print materials and (ahem) retail items“. So I suppose if this logo design contest is open to, well, everyone, and is going to be used on (ahem) “retail items“, there’s some sort of prize? You betcha. The winner of the design will receive a whopping $20 gift card to the Girl Scout Stores. Cue up Oliver… [News Channel 34]