Announcement BY Armin

Voting Polls on the B-Side

Just a quick apology regarding the polls on the B-Side: For the past week or two weeks, many logos that would normally have a majority of “Bad” votes have been appearing as getting more “Great” votes than they deserve. Some have expressed in the comments that it is the result of bots, or people from that company coming in and voting en masse. It’s not. It was my fault. I’m the dumbass. If you care to know: For every post there is an XML text file that gathers the votes. In theory these text files start out with 0, 0, 0 counts for Great, Fine, and Bad, respectively. But for some reason, the file I have been using as a template for the last week or two had 186 already logged under Great, so that’s why the polls are off. I’ll see if I can fix the old ones.

Opinion BY Armin

P&G is Over the Moon

Established in 1837, P&G is one of the largest (if not the largest) consumer packaged goods company in the world with operations in 75 countries and more than $83 billion in sales in 2012. Its two key areas — beauty and grooming and household care — include some of the most well-known consumer brands like Pampers, Gillette, Tide, Ariel, Downy, Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Olay, Oral-B, Crest, Dawn, and Always. Earlier this year, without calling much attention to itself, P&G introduced a new logo designed by Landor.

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Opinion BY Armin

Minsk Gets in Line

Established in 1067, Minsk is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Belarus with nearly 2 million people — about 20 percent of the population of the country. Today, as described by the Minsk City Executive Committee, Minsk is “a modern, dynamic city, the largest transport and logistics center, a cultural and scientific center of the country” with high education standards, positive diversity, clean and green (as in parks and stuff), and mostly as a city on the rise. “Minsk,” however, share London- and Moscow-based agency INSTID, who have been working with the city on its new identity since August 2012, “lacks a clear identity. Its residents define themselves mostly by nationality, and admit that Minsk does not have a particular culture or tradition of its own.” Commissioned by the city’s tourist information agency, INSTID’s task was to “help improve international recognition of Minsk to help it attract foreign investment, visitors, and talent” and “help residents feel proud of Minsk and develop a unique city culture based on their distinct character, and create a powerful platform for city’s future development.” The new identity will begin to be implemented this summer.

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Friday Likes BY Armin

Friday Likes 45

Backgrounds of lightly-colored hues abound in this week’s Friday Likes with work from the UK, Russia, and Greece.

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Opinion BY Armin

Mall of America Gets Wrapped Up

Opened to the public in 1992 in the suburb of Bloomington in Minneapolis near the Twin Cities, the Mall of America (MOA) is he United States’ largest retail and entertainment complex as a 4.87 million square foot structure sitting in a plot of land 78 acres big — either 7 baseball stadiums or 32 Boeing 747s would fit inside. Attracting 42 million visitors annually, MOA houses 520 shops, an indoor amusement park with 27 rides, an indoor aquarium, a 14-screen movie theater, and even a chapel that weds over 300 couples every year. In other words: it’s big, it’s bombastic, and, um, it’s big. Yesterday, MOA introduced its new identity designed by Minneapolis-based Duffy & Partners.

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Opinion BY Armin

Destination: Corner of Stuff and Stuff

In 2005, the MoMA Design Store launched the first of its Destination: Design series that brings products from different cities and countries from around the world to the museum’s store. The project has a couple of benefits: a) more cool stuff to buy at MoMA and b) exposure for local artists who may not otherwise get a chance to sell their work at such large scale. So far, the series has brought products from Finland, Denmark, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Japan, Seoul, Brazil, Portugal, Istanbul, and Mexico. Its latest edition is Destination: NYC, a collection with approximately 200 lifestyle products including home accessories, furniture, paper goods and jewelry — all products are manufactured in the U.S.. Each edition in the series has had its own identity, sometimes designed in-house at MoMA, others in collaboration. This one was designed with the School of Visual Arts Masters in Branding Program under the guidance of Mark Kingsley, who also wrote advertising headlines and copy, designed window and store displays (currently in progress) and product photography.

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Opinion BY Armin

Kering Goes Owl Out with New Branding

Established in 1963 as Pinault — later Pinault-Printemps, later Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, most recently PPR, and completely renamed as Kering this past March — is one of the most comprehensive parent company of luxury brands, including Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Brioni, Christopher Kane, and Stella McCartney among others as well as sports brand Puma. Family-owned since its inception, Kering is present in more than 120 countries, it employs 33,000 people and generates 9.7 billion euros in revenue. The new name was created internally with help from Havas Lifestyle, who are also credited with designing the logo and identity while Dragon Rouge is credited with brand strategy and the signature.

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Opinion BY Armin

The Future of Fox is Now

Hinted to as early as July of 2012 and officially announced this past December, Rupert Mudorch’s News Corporation is splitting into two separate businesses. The first, to remain named News Corporation will handle all the publishing properties — newspapers and magazines — like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, with the former’s managing editor, Robert Thompson, as CEO. The second, to be renamed 21st Century Fox will handle the entertainment properties — cable and television channels, filmed entertainment, and direct satellite broadcasting businesses — including the FOX network, 20th Century FOX, FX, among dozens of other channels with Rupert Murdoch as CEO. Absolutely every single property will retain its existing name and logo. The name, 21st Century Fox, will serve as the parent company only and the logo — announced this past Thursday via an e-mail to employees — will only be a business-to-business mark. It was designed by Pentagram partners Michael Gericke and Emily Oberman.

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Friday Likes BY Armin

Friday Likes 44

Things revolve around hand-drawn logos, animals, bearded tattooed models and other fine European accoutrements.

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Opinion BY Armin

Maha Music Festival Puts a Bird on it

First staged in 2009, the Maha Music Festival is a volunteer-run event in Omaha, Nebraska, featuring local, regional, and national indie and alternative rock artists that last attracted over 4,000 attendees — 2013 will be headlined by The Flaming Lips. Starting in 2012 the festival adopted a new identity by local firm Oxide Design. I realize this breaks my own criteria of the timeliness of work to be posted on Brand New and for all Omahans who consider this old news we deeply apologize (not too deeply) but, for some reason, today I struggled to find something interesting to post and this project had been piled on with other news since February and, well, it’s interesting.

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