Mozilla
Mozilla is on the prowl for a new logo, and now has four new contenders. They include a serif-ed play on http urls, a fireworks-like set of cogs, a flame, and an abstracted dinosaur face, with the “o” in Mozilla for an eye.
These designs represent the third stage of a four-part process that started in June. That’s when the open-source software company announced it would conduct its rebranding in public, online. Branding almost always happens behind closed doors, but Mozilla wanted a more inclusive approach. So it hired London firm Johnson Banks and asked its designers to publish its various unfinished ideas for the new logo online, where commenters could weigh in on the designs.
By inviting feedback from the public, Mozilla hopes to preempt the circus of criticism that usually follows a logo refresh. “Honestly, in today’s world, more than 50 percent of people usually say they hate new logos,” said creative director Tim Murray, when we spoke to him last month. “We thought: Well, let’s give people a chance to participate earlier on.”
It seems Mozilla is really listening. Since last month, it’s trimmed and refined its original seven concepts to these four new ones. In a blog post, Murray acknowledges the public’s confusion over certain complicated logos, and its affection for dinosaur-themed ones. At a glance, it would also appear that between public feedback and internal review, Mozilla is now targeting a simpler, flatter logo for its final look.
If you agree with that, let Mozilla and friends know. If you don’t agree, then definitely say so. Seriously, they want you to.
The Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics finally has a new logo, after its first pick was pulled amid plagiarism accusations. It’s a checkered ring designed by Asao Tokolo, a Japanese artist known for his geometric, black-and-white, almost Keith Haring-like works of art. The corresponding logo for the Paralympic Games uses the same checkered pattern, but it’s arranged as an orb, rather than a wreath-shaped ring.
We saw Tokolo’s design earlier this month, when the Tokyo Organizing Committee released four shortlisted logos chosen from the 14,599 designs submitted to an open competition, announced last fall. “Harmonized Chequered Emblem,” as Tokolo’s design is called, stood out a bit from the other three finalists. It eschewed bright colors and any suggestion of athleticism for a dark blue, traditional Japanese pattern that first became popular in the Edo period of Japan. According to Ningyo: The Art of the Japanese Doll, the “ichimatsu moyo” checkered pattern first appeared in the Kabuki theater:
A Kyoto actor, [Sanogawa] Ichimatsu first performed in Edo in 1741 where his use of an usual ishidatami (checkerboard) pattern in his obi and trousers led to a minor fashion craze in Edo, with the pattern ultimately being referred to as ichimatsu moyo. Famed for his beauty and his portrayal of young men’s roles, Ichimatsu was a heartthrob idolized by men and women alike.
In its more modern iteration here, the “ichimatsu moyo” pattern is fairly mutable. Tokolo created these two emblems by using different arrangements of just three shapes—one square and two differently sized rectangles—that can snap together to create curved graphics. The Tokyo Organizing Committee will surely need to use this emblem on myriad promotional materials. This scheme should make that easily possible.
ManvsMachine
When Nike first released its Flyknit line of shoes, in 2012, it seemed like yet another attempt—albeit, a technologically impressive one—from a sportswear company to cash in the trendy barefoot running trend. Now, it’s a few years later, and most Nike shoes feature the lightweight Flyknit technology. For the last World Cup, the Nike Magista soccer cleat was a Flyknit product. So is the Back to the Future-inspired self-lacing HyperAdapt 1.0 shoe. Flyknit is more than a cornerstone of Nike; it’s now a brand in its own right.
We know this because, as of last month, Flyknit even has its own visual identity. London design studio ManvsMachine created it for Nike’s 2016 Innovation Summit, along with an otherworldly 80-second, animated promotional film that turns a hallucinogenic, kaleidoscopic lens on the Flyknit technology. Because Flyknit products are woven together from many, many threads, ManvsMachine used that motif to create the main graphic components of both the new Flyknit logo and the video. The typeface is an adaptation on Objektiv, a font from Dalton Maag’s foundry that is built according the golden ratio. ManvsMachine’s spin on it introduces some slight curves, giving it a subtly unspooled look.
ManvsMachine created the video in Houdini, which allowed the designers to give Fantasia-worthy superpowers to a bunch of digitally rendered threads. A purple-and-blue thread loops together into an infinity symbol—the new Flyknit logo—before looping, darting, and weaving around. Watching the graphics is like peering into the manufacturing process through a magnifying glass. The end result is, of course, a Flyknit shoe. But if this snazzy campaign is any indication, Flyknit will soon be in more places than on your feet.
Getty Images
Have you heard? Cannabis is big business. And where’s there’s money, there’s branding. Designers are already elevating the weed design game with sophisticated gear and high-design packaging. For its May issue, Surface magazine gave a dozen top design studios a similar RFP: Create a fake aspirational marijuana brand that represents the future of weed-centric design culture. “Essentially, the future Starbucks of weed,” says Spencer Bailey, Surface’s editor-in-chief. Here’s what five of them came up with.
Original Champions of Design
Skunk, by Original Champions of Design
New York City studio Original Champions of Design envisioned Skunk, a line of weed products that use scent and vibrant packaging to attract new customers. Each of the boxes contains a different strain that can cater to a specific mood—everything from “Sunday Paper” to”Easy-Bake” to “Colombian Roast.”
“Skunk’s identity is developed specifically to aid with choosing the strain that’s right for you,” the designers say. “The two key design decisions are the signature white stripe that works like a highlighter to emphasize the product name and the perforated color-coded shell that provides a whiff of each distinctive marijuana varietal on contact.”
Pearlfisher
Allay, by Pearlfisher
Pearlfisher studio designed Allay, a medicinal product group meant to alleviate stress, sickness, and pain. Products include edible oil, dissolvable oral tabs, and a wristband that administers a precise dosage of cannabis. It looks like the type of brand you could find at Whole Foods or Walgreens.
“The brand aesthetic is simple, calming, and pure, challenging the traditional and functional language of the pharmaceutical category. Anchored in the idea of subtraction, implicit in the ‘minus sign’ of the ‘A’ logo, the design reflects the alleviative effects of the product, while educating consumers on correct dosages, communicated through varying degrees of color.”
Bruce Mau Design
Hi, by Bruce Mau Design
Bruce Mau Design envisioned a subscription service called Hi, where customers can order “BudBoxes” that contain weed products like tea and lotion with names like Soothe, Relax, Passion, Energy, and Focus. The hyper-tailored toking experience contains a single-serving of weed, “pre-measured to optimal dosage.”
Mau explains that he kept the design bright and fun to make the decision-making process as least stressful as possible. “The vibrant colors and bold, friendly typography evoke both simplicity and general cheeriness, while the character Bud serves as a friendly guide to choosing products in an enjoyable way,” he says.
Karlssonwilker
L’Enfer Est Volontaire, by Karlssonwilker
New York studio Karlssonwilker created L’Enfer Est Volontaire, a luxury weed line where you can find products like artisanal chips sealed with weed smoke. Rip the corner, inhale, and then open the rest of the package for your munchies snack.
“Adding marijuana smoke doesn’t use any additional energy or resources in its supply chain than an ordinary bag of chips—the air is simply replaced by premium plumes of Rocky Mountain Kush,” the designers explain. “Aesthetically, the design doesn’t align itself with the long lineage of ‘weed graphics,’ and the packaging isn’t meant to be appealing and appetizing in the typical ‘chips bag’ category. We liked this idea so much that we already secured the patent.”
Base Design
Okay, by Base Design
New York City studio Base Design created Okay, a mood-enhancing cannabis additive that you can add to food or drink or take on its own. The liquid is contained in a ketchup-like package, making it easy to stash in your bag and take wherever. Base Design envisions Okay becoming ubiquitous like Sweet n Low or Budweiser.
“Because legal marijuana is a relatively new category, existing products rely heavily on conventional symbols: psychedelia, the leaf, etc., and traditional modes of consumption, like smoking and edibles,” the team says. “We wanted to move away from such stigmas and instead imagine how marijuana might exist 10, 20, 30 years from now, as a part of everyday life.”
Jones Knowles Ritchie
I’ve never noticed this before, but Domino’s Pizza has a nice logo. It’s one domino tile, tilted diagonally. One half is red, and has one pip, and the other half is blue and has two pips. It’s simultaneously simple and instantly evocative of the food delivery chain. By any standard of logo design, it’s a success.
Branding agency Jones Knowles Ritchie has rightfully taken notice, and created a new design scheme for Domino’s Pizza boxes, based on its clever logo. Now, each pizza box is a solid color, with one or a couple of pip-dots on it. This stratagem really only makes sense when you have two boxes that, together, form one domino, but that’s not a problem: JKR did some research and learned that, in the United Kingdom, 96 percent of the pizzas Domino’s sells are sold as a pair, thanks to the pizza chain’s propensity for offering two-for-one combo deals. (The new pizza box design is only launching in the UK.)
The world of pizza box design is surprisingly vast—in the past, we’ve even talked to a bonafide “pizza box expert” about the innovations surrounding the construction of pizza delivery vessels. The new Domino’s design doesn’t depart from the traditional corner-cut design, but its graphics stand out from the pack. As Lee Rolston, Global Strategy Director at JKR, put it in a press release: “Domino’s … boxes had become cluttered with generic messaging.” That’s true of other chains’ pizza boxes, too. Now, by embracing the principles of bold, minimal design, JKR has made Domino’s pizzas a bit more appetizing—inside and out.
This is #Tokyo2020Emblems design A “Harmonized chequered emblem”
Give us your views https://t.co/NtQVdCPOpd pic.twitter.com/N6AfKdIvTP
— Tokyo 2020 (@Tokyo2020) April 8, 2016
Last October, after drama over a potentially plagiarized logo, the Tokyo Organizing Committee put out an open call for submissions for a new emblem. Ideas arrived in droves: 14,599 designs, from professionals and amateurs alike, came in. Today, the committee has unveiled the four that are shortlisted for selection.
The designs all feature a circular decal atop the words “Tokyo 2020,” and either the iconic Olympic rings or the red-blue-and-green “three agitos” insignia that represents the Paralympic Games. Most draw on symbolism rooted in Japanese culture; the “harmonized checkered emblem,” for example, uses the “ichimatsu moyo” checkered pattern popular during the time when Tokyo was known as Edo. The morning glory flower, seen in the “flowering of emotions” design, is another motif from Japan’s Edo period.
The Tokyo Organizing Committee went the extra mile to avoid a debacle like last summer’s, in which Belgian designer Olivier Debie accused Japanese designer Kenjiro Sano of plagiarism. In a statement accompanying the four shortlisted designs, the committee said, “we have implemented a series of format and design checks on all entries, and have received the cooperation of design experts during the design checks. We have also undertaken both domestic and international trademark verification procedures.” Now that the four designs are public, the committee is turning the process back over to the people, again. Via an opinion form on the site, the committee is accepting opinions from the public until April 17. Those thoughts will factor into the Tokyo 2020 Emblems Selection Committee’s final decision.
This is #Tokyo2020Emblems design B “Connecting Circle, Expanding Harmony” Give us your views https://t.co/NtQVdCPOpd pic.twitter.com/L6og0BIVYM — Tokyo 2020 (@Tokyo2020) April 8, 2016
This is #Tokyo2020Emblems design C “Surpassing One’s Personal Best”
Give us your views https://t.co/NtQVdCPOpd pic.twitter.com/9rTsm2uQ3J
— Tokyo 2020 (@Tokyo2020) April 8, 2016
This is #Tokyo2020Emblems design D “Flowering of Emotions” Give us your views https://t.co/NtQVdCPOpd pic.twitter.com/BBrDkA8U23 — Tokyo 2020 (@Tokyo2020) April 8, 2016
Anheuser-Busch
Bud Light, our nation’s favorite beer, has a new, rather adult, look.
The can is still blue, but the familiar, elliptical swoosh is gone, replaced by the same Anheuser-Busch crest that decorates Budweiser cans. The typeface is different, too: Instead of the italicized “Bud Light,” the beer’s name appears in a bold type reminiscent of what you see on Absolut Vodka bottles. The work was done by the design agency Jones Knowles Ritchie1, and it’s the first packaging overhaul to Bud Light in eight years. Expect to see it in stores and fraternity houses this spring.
Technically, the new look is old. The combination of bold lettering and the crest harks back to the 1980s, when Bud Light cans bore a similar design, but with the red and white colors still seen on Bud Heavy cans. This return to vintage design has been happening across the industry: in recent years both Miller Lite and Coors Lite have dialed back on their bro-tastic 3-D, adrenaline-infused graphics, and reintroduced humbler designs. The resulting effect is less “crushing beers and watching Sunday football,” and more “playing pool at someone’s hunting lodge.”
Whether this is a response to the booming craft beer industry, or just in keeping with the larger trend towards simplified design, it seems to pay off: Last year, Bloomberg reported that sales of Miller Lite’s retro cans were up 18 percent. Bud Light, which has seen sales flag in recent years, must be looking for some of that retro love.
1UPDATE 1:00 PM ET 12/18/15: This story has been updated to correctly identify the design agency behind Bud Light’s new look.
GV
Google Ventures as we know it is no more. The corporate venture capital subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. is now “GV.” The rebranding is part of a major overhaul to the company’s visual identity, which includes a redesigned website and a striking new logo.
The latter, which was designed in house, is a minimalist monogram that combines geometric letterforms, dimensionality, and negative space to great effect. A sans-serif “G”—a heavyset version of the one in the redesigned Google logo—is partially obscured by the implied first-diagonal of an uppercase “V,” the vertex and second-diagonal of which are rendered in a bold, trapezoidal slash.
GV
That slash is used as a clever design element across the new GV website, and features prominently in the video below. It does feel a little forced in this graphical breakdown of the company’s investments, which appeared in a year-in-review article published on Medium earlier this week—but by and large it seems like a pretty versatile conceit.
The rebranding is a smart move by Google Ventures (er, GV), and for Alphabet at large. The holding company has done an impressive job of using visual imagery to its advantage, leveraging smart design to distinguish between its stable of companies (the Google logo’s colorful palette telegraphing friendly approachability where GV’s edginess conveys innovation), while signaling their membership in the greater Alphabet ecosystem.
Feel like designing the #Tokyo2020Emblems? The competition starts today! Check out details: http://t.co/b7GJOyg5Uh pic.twitter.com/Q4k5yMfOQT
— Tokyo 2020 (@Tokyo2020) October 16, 2015
After this summer’s drama surrounding its potentially plagiarized logo, the Tokyo Organizing Committee is putting its branding decisions to the people.
Rather than hire another professional designer to create the replacement logo for Kenjiro Sano’s deposed work—which was thrown out after Belgian designer Olivier Debie raised concerns over its similarity to his own work—the organizers have launched a public competition. Applicants must be at least 18 years old, and either a native of Japan or a foreign national with the right to live in Japan. No design experience is required. Themes to consider are:
“The power of sport”, “Typifying Tokyo and/or Japan”, “World peace”, “Exerting the utmost efforts and striving to achieve a personal best,”, “Inclusivity”, “Innovation and Futuristic”, “Regeneration (ability to recover from the 2011 disaster).”
It’s possible the Tokyo Organizing Committee is sick and tired of dealing with designers (besides the controversy over Sano’s logo, the Japanese government scrapped Zaha Hadid’s $2 billion stadium and started over from scratch), and decided to just throw its hands up and be done.
Or, more optimistically, perhaps the new submission criteria are meant to democratize the creation of a symbol that will celebrate people of all kinds. It’s worked before: the original American Airlines logo was designed by a traffic manager who entered the company’s open call for submissions.
Medium, the freewheeling editorial site that’s definitely not a publishing tool, just got itself a new logo. Still a letter “M,” this one ditches the old slab serif look for a flat design of four multi-colored planes that hinge together to create said “M.” The logo is the work of type designer Rod Cavazos, from foundry PSY/OPS, and comes with a bigger design overhaul that includes new UI tools aimed at making Medium more social.
This being Medium, its founder and designers have self-published many a manifesto about the thinking behind the redesign. You can read all about new tools here, Medium’s new social aspirations here, and the process behind the new logo here. In the latter, Medium art director Erich Nagler and designer Karen Jaimes tidily summarize the inner monologue of a rebranding—much of which is universal to other modern media brands.
While simple, elegant, and strong, this Stag M proved rather inflexible as a logo. It served us well through our first few of years, but as Medium has grown and evolved, the logo has begun to feel flat, impenetrable, blunt, and not to be toyed with. It is also not particularly distinctive, either. In short, our M no longer captured or conveyed what Medium has become.
And of the new logo, they say:
This simple geometric interpretation of the M felt fun — like a delightful game or a deeply satisfying puzzle. We couldn’t stop ourselves from playing with all the different treatments, mutations, and color combinations it was practically begging for.
Jesse Reed/Hamish Smyth
Last week, we told you the dramatic story of the rise and fall of “the worm,” NASA’s glorious logo from the 1970s. Its reappearance in the public eye was prompted by a Kickstarter campaign from Pentagram designers Hamish Smyth and Jesse Reed, who are looking to reissue the NASA Graphics Standards Manual, a 90-page document filled with illustrations and writings that outlined how NASA should implement the worm and its accompanying graphic system.
The Kickstarter has been wildly successful—more than 6,500 people have paid $79 a pop for what promises to be a gorgeous hard-cover rendition of the original document. Now, in a funny turn of events, NASA has decided to release the entire manual (which has always been in the public domain) as a free PDF on its website.
We’re not saying it was a direct response to the Kickstarter, but we have our suspicions. And regardless, there’s no competition here—both will be totally different experiences. The way we see it, now you have two ways to read a fantastic piece of graphic design history.
Just noticed how well the Obama logo works for Trump with some simple color changes and rotation. pic.twitter.com/1r91SeXTDx
— Matthew Gordon (@ratherironic) September 2, 2015
Donald Trump’s official campaign logo—a banner reading “Make America Great Again!”—isn’t as typographically offensive as, say, Jeb’s logo. But it is pretty generic and, as far as logomarks go, not that adaptable. How on Earth will he ever get that banner on an app button for mobile?
Here’s an idea, from astute design observer Matthew Gordon in Boulder, Colo.: why not just co-opt Obama’s campaign logo and make it his own? The Obama logo, designed before the 2008 campaign by Sol Sender, depicts a new sun rising over rolling hills—a symbol of new beginnings and American optimism. If you just flip it upside down and paint it orange, though, you have a symbol of Trump himself—wispy golden mane and all. Sure, it’s a narcissistic logo for a presidential campaign. And yes, the idea is rife with copyright protection issues. But unconventional antics haven’t bothered Trump before.
Théâtre de Liège vs Tokyo 2020 #Tokyo2020 #ThéâtredeLiège #plagiat? pic.twitter.com/u64MpWBAI2
— Olivier Debie (@OliDebie) July 28, 2015
Faced with allegations of plagiarism, the Tokyo Organizing Committee for the 2020 Olympics has withdrawn its chosen logo for the summer games.
The logo, created by Japanese graphic designer Kenjiro Sano, features a set of geometric shapes built to form a ‘T.’ Unfortunately for Sano and the committee, so does this logo, which Belgian designer Olivier Debie created for the Théâtre de Liège in Belgium. Just five weeks after Tokyo rolled out its logo, Debie published this animated loop on Twitter and Facebook, along with the not-so-subtle suggestion that Sano ripped off his work.
Things got dicey after that. Cases of copyright infringement are rarely cut and dry, and that’s especially true with graphic design, where its creators are tasked with trying to legal claim and protect abstracted, geometric shapes and lines. It’s hard to own a square.
Tokyo’s now-scrapped logo for the 2020 Olympics
Although Debie never registered a trademark for his design, he went ahead with threats of legal action against the committee. Sano said in a press conference that he had never seen Debie’s logo, and Toshiro Muto, director-general of the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, said he stood by the originality of Sano’s design. Then, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Organizing Committee caught wind of similarities between Sano’s original design and a poster created for an exhibit on the work of German typographer Jan Tschichold. This week, the committee decided by a vote to pull the plug, and save some face. They are now going back to the drawing board.
This is the second design-related fire the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Committee has had to put out. Earlier in July, well before the logo controversy, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that work would halt on Zaha Hadid’s $2 billion stadium, and that the committee would be starting from scratch.
1 / 8 NASA’s graphics manual from the 1970s.Display
2 / 8 The manual outlined how to employ the agency’s new logo.Display
3 / 8 The logo is called The Worm.Display
4 / 8 Display
5 / 8 Display
6 / 8 Display
7 / 8 Display
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1 / 8 NASA’s graphics manual from the 1970s.Display
2 / 8 The manual outlined how to employ the agency’s new logo.Display
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4 / 8 Display
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9
In 1974, the new york studio of Danne & Blackburn took on a massive client. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (you might know it as NASA) was looking for a rebranding after 15 years of the “meatball,” their colloquial nickname for the circular blue logo which showcased “NASA” surrounded by a sprinkle of stars, a flying rocket ship and a bright red arrow.
Danne & Blackburn replaced the meatball with a modern logotype of “NASA” that was called—get this—the worm. Yes, the meatball was replaced with the worm. With heavy lettering and ‘A’s reminiscent of rocket nosecones, the new logotype was precise and futuristic. It was certainly a far cry from its slightly goofy precedent. It also, as Pentagram partner Michael Bierut pointed out to Display magazine, looked pretty damn good on the side of a spaceship.
The design team at Danne & Blackburn then spent the next decade creating and tweaking what would become the NASA graphics manual, a definitive guide to employing the new graphics system. As Display wrote:
The Manual continued to evolve over the next decade. In the end it would reach about 90 pages and cover every aspect of NASA: Ground vehicles, all aircraft, the Space Shuttle, signing, uniform patches, publications of every kind, office forms, signing, public service film titles, space vehicles, and satellite markings.
Every so often the manual re-enters the internet’s consciousness and reminds us of how freakin’ cool the logomark really was. NASA switched back to the meatball in 1992, almost 20 years after the modernist design was introduced. Maybe it’s time for another switcheroo?
Check out the manual here on Flickr.
Jeb Bush recently took to Twitter to offer Hillary Clinton some graphic design advice. The Republican presidential candidate, whose logo has drawn its own special breed of attention, offered what you might call a reworking of Clinton’s divisive ‘H’ logo.
It proved the final blow in a brief but spectacular picture-war on Twitter between the two candidates. It began early yesterday, with Hillary Clinton, talkin’ ’bout the issues.
Cost won’t be a barrier to an education. Debt won’t hold you back. Read Hillary’s plan: http://t.co/A4pWb3fOf4 pic.twitter.com/KVyr8SlSVn
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 10, 2015
Then someone in Jeb’s camp decided to lend their own Photoshop-y spin to the idea.
@HillaryClinton pic.twitter.com/m6LAHYCLok
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) August 10, 2015
But wait! Hillary’s people have some edit suggestions.
.@JebBush Fixed it for you. pic.twitter.com/d4q9EWpXCA
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 10, 2015
And last, Jeb hits where it hurts: right in the logo.
.@HillaryClinton fixed your logo for you. pic.twitter.com/141nXHQe4Z
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) August 11, 2015
We’d all love to assume Hillary and Jeb were doing this personally, seated angrily in front of their laptops with fire in their hearts and a killer Photoshop layer mask in their hands. But this was almost certainly the result of some awesomely overzealous so