Another great system from Landor Australia where the filling of the M could be customised according to certain rules to adapt new requirements.

The designs were all part of conveying the diverse and creative fabric of Melbourne. There were fixed rules, in that we could only use the points of the triangular structure. All the crystal style facets, the gridded forms and the intricate patterns and 3d compositions all use the geometric points that the M was created on – nothing is just randomly positioned.

Thanks Jason for the quote.

http://www.landor.com/?do=thinking.blog&post_id=21038

Today i saw some pictures of Citroën’s Girona concession and i couldn’t help but smile. Landor’s work for Citroën’s brand identity was gigantic, exhausting, meticulous, everlasting but in in the end fullfilling. The plus on all of this is realizing that they took my illustrations for the kid’s corner.

This week I’m going to be finishing up my coverage of Melbourne’s State of Design festival and the other great things I came across on my trip Down There. (Including my hands down favorite, Hamish the koala bear)  And I can think of no better way to roll the ball than with sharing the new(ish) and super impressive logo design for the city of Melbourne by Sydney firm Landor Associates.  

via: level11

Ecco la nuovissima identità visiva della città di Melbourne.
Il progetto, davvero bello, è stato curato dalla Landor di Sidney.

Flessibilità è la parola chiave.
Serviva un marchio che riducesse la confusione generata dalla moltitudine di sotto-brand delle iniziative cittadine.
Così è nato questo meraviglioso progetto. Un marchio fresco, vibrante per un’urbanità nuova. Un marchio flessibile in centinaia di diverse declinazioni.
La M diventa icona di Melbourne, icona di Modernità.

È uno di quei progetti di cui escami: «avrei voluto farlo io!»

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Nell’articolo, qualche immagine del bellissimo progetto.

“Yesterday, Lord Mayor Robert Doyle unveiled a new identity that will represent the City of Melbourne, and provided plenty of rationale behind the new identity replacing a logo designed in the early 1990s.” – Read the full article from Brand New ( a division of Under Consdieration).

Landor have designed the new identity for Melbourne. Find out more at Brand New.

Any of us who have lived or worked in Nottingham for any length of time couldn’t help but notice that it isn’t terribly close to the seaside – and for me, this is the only part of living here that I have ever missed, having grown up in sunny, sandy Margate.

But now we have a brilliant solution. The seaside has come to us with the launch of the Nottingham Riviera yesterday.

Nottingham Riviera

And it looks brilliant, despite some dark clouds threatening the perfect seaside break inland.

Nottingham has worked hard over the years to dispel the ridiculous myths about its problems. All of which are based more around a tiny political boundary that distorts the figures than any real issues that any other growing city doesn’t face.

Perhaps if Nottingham gets the march on Torbay, who are apparently rebranding to become the English Riviera, the City could own this creative space before Torbay moves into it.

Is this the end for Torbay and is Nottingham the new English Riviera

But it seems that the Nottingham ‘Brand’s is becoming about innovation, which we have recommended for years as being the way for any brand or even any place to continue to be loved by its audience.

Yesterday also saw the arrival of Sven to the city to take over as Director of Football at Notts County – The oldest Football league club in the world. Again, great news (albeit a bit surreal) and another huge jaw dropping positive piece in the news about the city.

Today sees the first meeting of the Sheriff’s Commission – a panel put together specifically to show how Robin Hood can be more embedded into the fabric of the city. When we did the City brand some years ago, we were hammered for saying we did not have a strong enough offer for our green hero and choosing to focus on some of the other positives in the meantime. Thankfully this may now be coming to an end.

Melbourne have just undertaken their own rebrand through Landor and seem to be getting the usual bollocks about what it cost and how little effect it will have, but if this is what it takes for a city to start acting differently it’s money well spent.

The New Wonky 'M' Melbourne logo

Considering we’re meant to be in a recession, Nottingham genuinely feels like it is really fighting back. It’s become proud and innovative again and is building its brand by continuing to act differently and by actually being innovative.

Branding is about the sustained differentiation of a product, service or place. In this regard Nottingham is practicing some of the best branding you will see from any city anywhere.

Long may it continue.

The Sci Fi Channel, one of the top networks on basic cable, rebranded itself today as Syfy.

It’s pronounced the same.  The programming is the same.  It’s just the name that’s different.  The reasons are simple.  As stated in their new tagline, Syfy wants to “imagine greater.”

For one thing, Syfy wants to broaden people’s expectations of the type of programming they’ll see on the network.  Not all of its programming is conventional science fiction, per se.  Syfy is hoping its bizarre neologism will symbolize a wider range of “imagination-based entertainment,” which includes the fantasy genre — dragons, warlocks, Renaissance Faire stuff — and paranormal programming, like the reality show Ghost Hunters.

Before and after logos

Syfy is also hoping that by further distancing itself from the science fiction genre, the network can expand its viewership among non-techie people with more of a social bent.  Women, for example.

Perhaps most importantly, the word Syfy can be trademarked.  (Common-use words like sci-fi can’t, hence spelling modifications such as Froot Loops.)  But in this age of multi-device searches and globalized online media, it was a liability for the Sci Fi Channel to have a name it couldn’t legally own.  When you’re searching for “sci-fi show,” for instance, it can be hard for search engines to distinguish Sci Fi Channel programming from other programs within the genre.  Now that the name is Syfy, people are sure to get Sci Fi Channel programming when they search for “Syfy show.”  (Or else somebody will get slapped with a cease-and-desist letter for unauthorized use of a trademark.)

The Sci Fi Channel worked with Landor to pick its new name, evaluating 300 possibilities before selecting Syfy.

We think Syfy is a good choice.  It brings forward the Sci Fi Channel’s legacy while giving the network the flexibility needed to expand its programming and viewership.  (Though if Syfy really wants more female viewers, it should create a show with Oprah or Sarah Jessica Parker — riding unicorns and battling aliens, of course.)

Update 3/30/09 8:45 AM:  Blogtalkradio has landed an interview with former SyFy Radio host and SyFy Portal founder Michael Hinman (whose brand name was purchased from Sci Fi- and thus creating even more confusion on true origins of the new SyFy moniker). The interview also includes a chat with Mitchell Rubenstein, one of the founders of Sci Fi Channel.

Update 3/28/09: Dave Howe Responds Further, mentions tracking Twitter for Syfy feedback.

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Confirming some internal chatter from some of my colleagues at Landor-

In a blog posting from Executive Director Ken Runkel, it looks like the Syfy naming controversy has taken an unexpected turn. Global Branding Agency Landor adds a twist to the latest by explaining in their blog that they are NOT behind the new name. Unconfirmed sources say that the credit (internally at least) has been given to Michael Engleman, VP Creative with developing the name. He was previously VP at CMT overseeing rebranding efforts at the network. The channel names “SFC” and “Beyond” were also considered and tested.

Here’s the screenshot of the Landor blog entry:

Interestingly, it’s been reported that NBC-U appears to have registered “SyfySucks.com” on January 30, via Corporation Services Company— which also holds new registration for Syfy.com

And for mobile phone readers, here’s the text:

“While we’d love to take credit for all the branding initiatives our clients take on, sometimes we just can’t. This is the case with the recent launch of Syfy, the new name for our client, the Sci Fi Channel.

As reported in last week’s New York Times, the Sci Fi Channel, a division of NBC Universal, introduced its new name and identity, Syfy, at upfront presentations in New York. The announcement got a lot of attention, and although the New York Times story seemingly gave Landor credit for the work—we can’t take it—because we didn’t do it.

Yes, we worked with the Sci Fi Channel, and it hired us to consult on the project. However, Syfy was a name generated internally and pre-tested at the channel before our involvement. Once Landor was involved, we explored new names as part of the process, but it was the Channel’s call to go with Syfy.”

Do you remember corporate identity? I mean when there was this thing called corporate identity that was totally separate from a design firm, an ad agency, a pr firm? And there wasn’t such a thing as a “branding agency”?

There was foundational and epic work by Paul Rand, and others who followed behind–Lippincott & Margulies, Landor. These designers envisioned logos that would live for generations, cast in concrete, metal, adorning glossy brochures. They took as much time as they needed to explore alternative designs; after all, these logos were going to live for 20, 30 years or more. And just as advertising was still the purview of the CEO, so was corporate identity. These were the days before Wall Street absorbed the CEO’s full attention.

And then there were the systems. Beautiful three-ring binders filled with stories about the company and how the logo evolved. And cryptic guidelines that were written for those rare individuals who understood pica, font, CMYK. This knowledge was closely guarded, usually by the head of corporate communications. (These were the days before CMO’s) The binder was distributed on a need to know basis.

Stationery was important then, and forms, because they were produced in quantity and lasted a long time. Corporations with a strong corporate identity were distinctive. They stood out from the crowd with a certain elegance superior to companies with mismatched marketing material.

In a world that was dominated by the command and control management style, and at a time when advertising told consumers what they should want and why they should buy (no questions asked) the whole corporate identity thing worked very well.

Enough reminiscing. It’s a whole new world today. And I think the old world is still colliding with the new one, in an unhealthy way. Companies don’t have 10 year strategic plans anymore, but they often have identity systems that are 10 years old. If print was the dominant medium when your corporate identity was created, then it’s probably outdated. Visual systems today need the potential for movement, animation, deconstruction. Logos must work as tiny bugs next to a URL more often than they are seen on stationery.

And today, employees and consumers have a personal stake in how a brand (including the logo) lives and communicates in the world. This is not easy to reconcile. Some companies maintain an “enforcer” approach, others throw up their hands and completely let go. I think there is a better way. More about this later.

Since August 2008, there has been a team fully immersed in creating the Symbian Foundation brand. We were a few recruits from Symbian (Patricia Correa, Thibaut Rouffineau and myself) plus S60 representatives (Esa Eerola, Minna Karvonen and Olli Sotka). You may already have seen a sneak preview of brand elements at Mobile World Congress but we’ve got a whole lot more to show over the next few weeks as we develop, refine and make a final choice on the exact tone of yellow – all the fun bits!

That’s not to say that it has all be fun. We had just three months to work on a brand strategy for the foundation. This involved some flying back and forth for intensive all day meetings and many long weeks but we delivered in time and with big smiles on our faces, because at first it had seemed impossible, impossible! In December, our team was joined by the experts at Landor, a first-class global brand agency (they created the BP ‘flower’), and together, we brought the Symbian Foundation brand to life.

So far we have had a lot of interest in the brand – it was a big talking point for us at Mobile World Congress, words like fresh, unconventional, human and playful were at the tips of the tongues of our critics. As I mentioned, there’s a lot more to come – take a look at this…Pat might just have a cult following after this home video masterpiece about a phone with a heart!

Para comemorar o seu 90º aniversário, a Citroen lançou em fevereiro sua nova logomarca assinada pela Landor.

A mesma identidade visual aparece em evidência, só que agora com uma aparência tridimensional que transmite uma imagem de triunfo, poder e tecnologia. A cor vermelha do nome também está mais forte trazendo um espírito de ambição segundo release.

Die französische Automobilmarke Citroën hat kürzlich ihr Logo modernisiert. Das vorige war 30 Jahre unverändert geblieben.

Das Logo hat seinen Ursprung in einer doppelten Schrägverzahnung (Pfeilzahnung) von Zahnrädern. Dies war nach 1900 der erste Produktionsschwerpunkt des Unternehmens.

Das neue Logo wird durch die Plastische Modellierung jetzt eher zu einem greifbaren Objekt, wie man es in Chrom von der Motorhaube seit langem kennt. Und folgt damit einem Trend im Logodesign der letzten Jahre – vor allem in der Automobilbranche (z.B. Mazda, Nissan, Opel, Renault, Seat, Volvo, VW, Mini).

Die komplette Neuerfindung der Citroen Marke  wurde von der Pariser Agentur Landor und dem Citroen hauseigenem Team unter Leitung von Jean-Pierre Ploué vollzogen. Jean-Pierre Ploué ist Designchef der Gruppe PSA Peugeot Citroën.

]]> http://lawebdeikusi.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/el-rediseno-de-citroen/ Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:47:51 +0000 Kristian http://lawebdeikusi.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/el-rediseno-de-citroen/ http://narrativebranding.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/whats-up-with-all-these-sound-alike-branding-firms/ Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:36:04 +0000 rringer http://narrativebranding.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/whats-up-with-all-these-sound-alike-branding-firms/ http://behindbrands.com/2009/01/28/coors-light-tem-novo-visual/ Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:04:40 +0000 edmurcelice http://behindbrands.com/2009/01/28/coors-light-tem-novo-visual/

A MillerCoors, segunda maior cervejaria dos Estados Unidos, renovou o visual da Coors Light, uma das marcas do seu portfólio. A cervejaria que recentemente já havia refinado o slogan da Coors Light para “refreshment as cold as the Rockies”, resolveu agora dar um tom mais refrescante e real no visual da sua bebida de baixa caloria.

A cor prata da Coors Light ganha também a cor azul para reforçar a imagem de refrescância. Já a imagem da montanha aparece de uma maneira heróica e mais real, com tons em negrito.

O trabalho é assinado pela Landor.

Martin Bishop @ Landor raised an interesting point:

Back in the 1970s, during a previous recession, Jimmy Carter said: “We’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.”  He was wrong. Do we really think things will be different this time after the fun of frugality wears off?

I think so and I certainly hope so.  My question is, what might make an entire market move in the direction to want more from less?  How can we achieve it?  

The media fuelling aspirational consumption certainly doesn’t help.  People are forced to feel like they have to consume, consume, consume to be content.  I feel it is time for a consumer backlash – we’re bored of buying to feel validated and bingeing on futile celebrity gossip.  So, what are you going to write about now? And how are you going to make us feel better about ourselves rather than feeling ever dissatisfied?

After all, people will only want more from less, when they acknowledge the real value of what they have… now, and right under their noses.

All Your Don Draper Are Belong To Us

By now you’ve read Bud Melman’s memo and seen the first two episodes of Digital Mad Men, the very clever appropriation by Allen Adamson of Landor. As we reach the end of the year, this whole thing really brings home some of the things I’ve focused on this year and some of the trends I think will really take prominence in 2009.

It all starts with great content. Mad Men is a terrific show, which was confirmed by its Emmy win this year. Strong content leads to what I call a Deeply Immersive Narrative Universe. Consumers loved the content so much they weren’t satisfied to simply watch, they wanted to participate. From that we got Mad Men on Twitter.

Here’s Allen on the subject:

Be it active or passive, voluntary consumer participation is a cool branding tool

Even the savviest marketer will tell you that you can’t deem a brand-building tactic cool unless a consumer deems it cool, no matter how great an arbiter of cool you think you are. In fact, the savviest marketers will tell you that the most successful brand-building tactics are, more often than not, the handiwork of consumers, given the control they’ve been ceded as a result of the digital evolution. They’ll also tell you that the best advocacy-generating cool is interactive, like the recent ad-hoc Twitter initiative for AMC’s Mad Men, where thousands upon thousands of devotees of the show set up accounts to follow the lives of the characters. This user-generated socialization of content has taken on a life of its own and AMC, while initially a bit nervous at its loss of control over how the characters “tweet” each other, has come to the conclusion that this voluntary consumer engagement adds an incredible meta-level of depth to the program and its inhabitants, not to mention gives the network PR that money just can’t buy.

Getting a consumer to deem a passive online experience cool enough to pass along is also a vote of confidence that money can’t buy. For example, my current YouTube spoof, Digital Mad Men,

If you can get an initiative to catch on with consumers, cool. Be it active or passive, voluntary consumer participation is a great brand-building tool. Getting consumers engaged, especially through social media, can help bring a brand to life and build a deeper relationship with its customers. uses the show as a point of reference, an entertainment vehicle, to illustrate how digital is changing the “tools and conversation” but not the office dynamics of agency life. It also points out that in order to get more than a few thousand eyeballs you need to have content that goes beyond the category of clever to industry insiders.

Here’s Episode Three of Allen’s Digital Mad Men series…

Joe Pulizzi of Junta42 is one of the foremost advocates of content marketing. He points out that even in these tough economic times, brands are still looking to spend in this area.

Now is not the time to be pulling back on marketing, it’s just time to think differently about how you create excitement about your brand. Creating dynamic content, telling compelling stories and producing branded media is a way to speak to consumers in a way that engages.

Given my recent (minor) mishap with a motorcycle I’ve had a fair amount of time to contemplate scabs. (The owie-kind, not the labor relations kind.) Watching them form and then slowly go away, I had a small epiphany about branding firms.

My conclusion is that branding firms, as we know them today, are essentially scabs.

How are scabs born? Well, you start with healthy skin. Add trauma, in the form of friction against asphalt or a 360 pound motorcycle falling on your leg, and the skin is, um, disturbed. Eventually a scab forms over the site of the trauma. Bingo. You now have a tent of dead cells under which the living cells are busy replicating themselves and making something new.

And that’s how it is with traditional branding firms. At one time, they were healthy skin. They were alive and working, and their model of branding was quite adequate. Then trauma arrived in the form of change – change in how people relate to brands, change in how brands function, change in the marketplace, etc.

Ouch. That hurt. At that point the branding firms of today became shields of inert protective matter while beneath them living cells began to reproduce themselves. As the skin heals, the old dead scab becomes less and less vital and is eventually sloughed off to reveal the shiny new skin.

Now, if the big established branding firms like Interbrand, FutureBrand, Landor, and Siegel and Gale decided to reinvent themselves after the trauma of change, they would be the new, living and therefore vital skin, not the scab. They could have used the trauma to transform themselves. But they didn’t.

Not too long ago Dennis talked to a veteran strategist in New York who has worked at several of the big branding firms. She said she was bored. The tools, she said, the thinking, and the methodology of branding was completely interchangeable among the big shops. They were all performing the same old studies, using the same old tired language, and making the same old recommendations. You could put any one of their logos at the tops of the deliverables and no one would notice. She was looking for something new.

Her experience is confirmed by the work we see from these firms.

That’s why we’re not a branding firm. At least not as defined by the current branding firms. We understand what they do, we know how they do it, and it’s no longer sufficient. The world is demanding something new. So for the past few years we’ve been bringing together people from the four main disciplines – interactive, advertising, design, and, yes, branding – to make a different kind of agency.

We’re the busy little cells under the big brown tent. And that’s how we like it.

- Doug

If Obama was a car brand, what would it be? According to a just released survey, he would be a posh BMW. John McCain, on the other hand, would have to conform with the more blue-collar – but extremely “real American” – Ford.

No wonder, then, that Obama would be driving that BMW as the übercool James Bond, while McCain would be thrusting away in a Ford pick-up as the red-blooded Jack Bauer. Well, at least that’s what respondents to the just released 2008 Presidential ImagePower survey say.

With voters striving to survive the barrage of polls and surveys thrown at them 24/7 by every media outlet, branding guru Landor and market research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland found a clever way to still get some of that ever-shortening attention span.

Forget all those dull questions like “who do you see as more trustful” or “which candidate do you regard as more reliable on the economy”. Right, like any of that really mattered. At the end of the day, people will vote for the candidate they like the most, and they choose it based on the narrative he has attached. The rest is just pointless babble.

In this consumerism-plagued world, what better way would there be to gauge the narrative attached to each candidate than to find out what brands people identify them with? So, in a repeat of the exercise premiered in 2004, the Presidential ImagePower survey now pitched Obama, McCain, Palin and Biden against a set of brands, in 15 categories, to see how people perceive them.

In most categories, the brands selected for each candidate reflect the common perceptions about both men. When asked to name some attributes for the candidates, people characterized the Democratic nominee as charming, approachable, compassionate, intelligent and unifying, while his GOP opponent was seen as strong, reliable and respected.

So, while Obama is a Google, McCain is a AOL. Where McCain is a Wall-Mart, Obama is a Target. There are also some similarities, with both candidates being identified with the game-changing Ipod, as well as with Starbucks and MySpace. Each of this brands is seen as transformative, and this is how both Obama and McCain are perceived. One being the eternal Republican maverick and the other the first black candidate to the presidency, there’s no great jolts there.

There are, however, some startling surprises. In almost half of the categories (7 out of 15), respondents attributed the same brands to Obama and… Sarah Palin! They are, for instance, both identified with Google and People Magazine. Will Palin be shocked to find herself in such, uh, “un-American” company?

The similarities are even more pronounced between McCain and the Democratic candidate to the vice-presidency, Joe Biden. They share brands in 12 of the 15 categories.

In a presidential race that is all about change, both tickets have strived to stake a claim to the concept. As Scott Siff, exec VP at Penn, Schoen & Berland explains, “this similarity in the candidates’ brand strategies also indicates that whichever candidate best achieves the positioning they are both trying to claim may well be the winner on November 4”.

According to branding laws, this should spell victory for Obama. The Democratic candidate, having been the first to position himself over the “change” axis, shall have the top-of-mind advantage – something very hard to beat.

However, before we start chanting “President Obama”, it must be pointed out that the 2008 results mirror the 2004 survey in identifying the Republican candidate with mass-market brands, whilst the Democrat is identified with premium ones. And we all know how that election turned out.

So, what to make of this? Will the top-of-mind rule award victory to the Democratic well-constructed narrative of change? Or will Palin’s “real America” come out on top at the end, and again push the red-blooded, down-to-earth guy all the way to the White House?