No one has really asked, but given that my brandnew@ e-mail account is swelling with unanswered e-mails about tips and suggestions, I feel a self-imposed burden to explain a little bit of how I choose which identities we review here on Brand New.
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Welcome to, as I found out this morning, the complicated world of Yellow Pages, Yellow Books and Walking Fingers. Like “Xerox” or “Kleenex”, “Yellow Pages” has come to signify the market for those bulky telephone directories that magically appear at your doorstep when you least expect it. Yellow pages have existed since the late 19th century and now comprise a global network of directories published by different phone companies or local entities, and even specialty yellow pages developed for specific neighborhoods and target audiences. The Walking Fingers logo, the “Let Your Fingers Do The Walking” slogan, and Yellow Pages name were first introduced in 1961 by AT&T, and the subsidiary regional operating companies that made up the Bell System, but the logo was never trademarked by AT&T and, actually, AT&T happily allowed others to use the logo — this, of course, was rosy when AT&T was a monopoly and you didn’t have Verizon, or SBC bombarding you with yellow bricks.
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I don’t recall ever opening a copy of Reader’s Digest. I may have been tempted to do so in some crowded doctor waiting room but I probably chose to read something like Rhinoplasty Monthly which, even as a made up magazine, sounds more interesting than what the cover of a Reader’s Digest ever promised by looks alone — it felt cheap, lowbrow and filled with ads of “As Seen on TV”. [Full disclosure: I religiously read gossip mags like Us and OK! when I travel, so make of my literary tastes what you will]. Clearly, I’m one of the few in the world that does not read this magazine that enjoys distribution in 60 countries, in 50 editions and 21 languages, reaching 40 million people worldwide. Every month. 10 million copies alone make up the circulation in the U.S.. Well, as of December 10, with the launch of a new design and supporting a new positioning, only 8 million copies. Reader’s Digest is trying to gain ground on a younger market so it will put more effort and resources into its web site, accounting for the 2-million drop in circulation… and serifs.
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Not all rebrandings and logo redesigns have to happen on a larger than life scale, some happen in small offices under the guidance of a small group of people… sometimes only — gasp — just one person and, the change, only mattering to a diminutive audience. Nonetheless, the results are equally interesting. Such is the case with the work that John Walsh, of holdenandfriends in Knutsford, Cheshire, did for flux magazine — an independent publication covering fashion, music, art and culture — recently, redesigning the logo and the magazine from the outside in.
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