New Logo of Google

While the title of the post, “New Logo Look,” at the Official Google Blog is more of a tease than an actual new look for their logo, the small gesture of changing the way their array of services & applications are displayed on screen makes quite a big difference.

One of the thing about Google is that it is very consistent.  Going to Google.com hardly ever leads to confusion. Google has actually made aesthetic changes to its pages too.

But was just guessing the font – looks unfamiliar – just read that it is a custom font designed by Hoefler & Freré-Jones specifically for Google and this typeface isn’t being licensed

Interesting read:
http://typophile.com/node/58262
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-logo-look.html
http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

photoshop interface rendered

this is thee coolest thing i have seen in a loooooong time.
print and poster work for software-asli.com

agency : Bates141 Jakarta
creative director : Hendra Lesmono
art director : Andreas Junus & Irawandhani Kamarga
copywriter : Darrick Subrata
account executive : Nitya Priyahita
photgrapher : Anton Ismael

At Flickr

Branding Overlooked: An outlook for Indian B2B companies to think upon

These days when CEOs and corporate marketers talk about investing in brand, they’re probably referring to traditionally visible touchpoints such as product design, advertising, or web experience. That’s great, but what they, and most people, don’t realize is that branding is much more than just the stuff you can see.

Invisible branding refers to those stakeholder touchpoints that have little or no visual presence in the market, but can have a huge impact on your company’s reputation. The list includes items such as CEO vision, employee training, pricing strategy, customer relationships, and sales force communications. Each of these items are an essential part of a company’s brand, but because they’re not visible, business leaders often overlook them.

VISIBLE	INVISIBLE
Website	CEOs Vision
Marketing Collaterals	Customer Relationship
Advertising	Pricing Strategy
Point-of-sale	Employee Training
User Experience	Customer Wins
Photography	Sales Force Communication
	Public Relations
	Sponsorships

 

How important is invisible branding to your company? The short answer: it depends. If you’re a company like Apple you probably have bigger fish to fry (hello, tech support, etc.). But, if you’re a B2B company, invisible branding is everything. Why? Most B2Bs operate without the advantage of consumer-style marketing—their reputation is staked one hundred percent on invisible branding.

Does your company invest in this under-appreciated opportunity?

Modern Approaches to Data Visualisation

Visual-Literacy.org has published this great Periodic Table of methods of visualisation. This displays around 100 diagram types, with examples and a multi-faceted classification by:

• simple to complex
• data/information/concept/strategy/metaphor/compound
• process/structure
• detail/overview
• divergence/convergence

Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data – tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years.

Here are some most interesting modern approaches to data visualization
• Trendmap 2007 (http://www.informationarchitects.jp/ia-trendmap-2007v2)
• Newsmap (http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/)
• Voyage (http://rssvoyage.com/)
• Time Mag (http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/where_we_live/)
• We Feel Fine (http://www.wefeelfine.org/movements.html)
• Websites as graphs http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm
• Munterbund (http://www.munterbund.de/visualisierung_textaehnlichkeiten/essay.html)
• Visualcomplexity.com (http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/)
• Information Aesthetics (http://www.infosthetics.com/)

Mind Survey: How you ranked these corporates!

The Department of Psychology at Harvard University is currently running a study that examines how people perceive the ‘mental’ capacities of corporations. Based on 13 corporations, you will take tests — awesomely labeled like Worth, Punishment, Morality, Guilt and Desire — that take between 5 and 10 minutes to complete. The real kick is seeing how you rank your brands.

http://mind.wjh.harvard.edu/mindsurv.html

Bell got better.

New Bell Logo

A few excerpts from the BCE press release:

“The new Bell brand underlines that we are moving forward as a company and as a service provider, with new services, a new strategy and a new goal,” said George Cope, President and CEO of BCE and Bell Canada. “It’s a straightforward and customer-focused brand that directly supports the Bell team’s goal: To be recognized by customers as Canada’s leading communications company.”

The new brand platform was conceived by Zulu Alpha Kilo, a new agency founded by Zak Mroueh, the renowned Canadian creative genius behind award-winning brand and advertising campaigns for companies such as Mini, Nike and Pfizer.

Guinness – Good things come to those who wait

Well it’s Friday so I’ve got beer on my brain. Guinness has just started running their newest commercial, which is the most expensive for them to date. They contracted the world record holder in domino toppling ‘Weijers Domino Productions’ from the Netherlands for all the pandemonium.

The commercial was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig of Sony Bravia ‘Balls’ fame. The advert was shot on location in a remote side village called Iruya, in the Salta region of northern Argentina, with a population of around 1,000 people. Toppling items included: 6,000 dominoes, 10,000 books, 400 tyres, 75 mirrors, 50 fridges, 45 wardrobes and 6 cars. Now that was a good commercial. And from the look of things those people in the village really love themselves some Guinness.

Guinness Ad – [youtube]

Thanks to Karl, a man who loves good beer and beautiful women.

Indian Ads!!! Worth watching

this is hilarious…

 

A “Fresh” Identity

 

Ruby Tuesday, the international restaurant chain known for its dining menu and stirring salad bar, has been implementing a new, “fresh” (a word emphasized over and over) identity over the past several months to coincide with an update of the brand’s interior. Gone are black- and white- checkered tablecloths and the assortment of sports memorabilia that adorned the walls. In their place is a more upscale and elegant look and feel.

Welcome to the new Ruby Tuesday

5 star to 1 star… Sodexo

 In a world of streamlining, it seems like a lot of companies have gone to the so-called “web 2.0″ look. See: xerox, at&t, Holiday Inn, Wacom, etc. However, some identities have stuck to the traditional flat color look. Sodexo, one of the largest food services and facilities management companies in the world, recently updated their name and image and is one of the companies to evolve with a more traditional logo, designed by W & Cie in Paris.

Sodexo changed the spelling from Sodexho, noting that “in certain languages an ‘x’ followed by an ‘h’ is difficult to pronounce”. There seems to be a good strategy behind the redesign, however, the execution falls short. It was obvious the old mark needed to be updated as it didn’t seem refined. How many stars do you really need? Is that ligature really necessary? Does that red bar really add value to the logo?Condensing the mark seems to be a natural step in evolving the logo. A nice hue change makes it bolder. Incorporating the red from the prior logo makes sense. Keeping the notion of the “ex” ligature… okay, I see where they are coming from, but it is still awkward. And the red stroke of the “x” is supposed to represent a smile.

Sodexo has fallen into the trap of thinking lowercase makes for a friendlier logo. I don’t see a rational reason behind this change. Speaking of the lettering, the type does not look fully developed or refined. Perhaps it is because the ligature creates points while the rest of the type seems a little more unified. While I have some issues with the refinement of the mark, I think the overall concept of the mark enhances Sodexo’s image.