Fresh and innovative, this is quite special. In creating its own new identity, the MIT Media Lab developed an algorithm that produces a unique logo for every teacher, staff member and student at the school. Three intersecting spotlights can be organized into any of 40,000 shapes with 12 color combinations, and each person can claim and own an individual shape and use it on his or her business card. As Fast Company points out, that’s enough variation to give each new student a fresh logo for the next 25 years. [Ad Freaks].

Great work by The Green Eyl. I love the concept, method, variations and brand application. I also love the customisation and unique brand it creates for each person, it’s a dynamic, evolving brand identity… but honestly, I’m still unsure about those primary colours :/ Watch the 1:11 video and let us know what do you think. See the applications before you make up your mind.

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)

Evolving a brand identity can help maintain assurance that a brand is progressing and subtle alterations can subconsciously update and refresh a logo identity without alienating a target audience – Walker’s crisps have done this for years. Here are two nice examples of recent subtle logo redesigns…

The Mozilla Firefox logo redesign for version 3.5 of their internet browser was opened up to public scrutiny, exposing the process of redesigning a logo and prompting the public for their critiques. 13 iterations later and the logo was finalised. You can read the full story here or view the final official post where you can view every iteration and step your way through the design theory and branding process here (see the links a quarter down the page).

Read More >>

Following up to the ‘Pepsi Gravitational Field’ and Barclay’s logo posts, ‘Brand New‘ have released their best and worst brand redesigns of 2008. Amongst some big brand names, the top dishonour goes to the Pepsi rebrand. Read more here.  You can see the ‘Brand New’ opinion of the aforementioned Barclay’s logo here.

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)

Barclaycard have updated their logo and while it’s inoffensive and colourful it also appears to be quite meaningless. As a designer that has created many a corporate identity, unless I’m lacking some divine revelation as to the significance of this logo, I’d say the £600k fee that Brand Union pocketed for this logo design alone wasn’t exactly money well spent. Beyond the clichéd ‘global’ connotations, apparently the logo represents a ‘chip’ being released from the constraints of the plastic card and welcomed in by new, exciting methods of payment…?

Rather than distancing the brand from its competitors it merely blends in with the myriad of similar logos following a recent trend of circular logotypes (think Sony Ericsson, BT, AT&T). With only seeing a new logo, you can’t really form a full opinion on a rebranding. However, while the £1.5m identity refresh will certainly put a smile on the face of Brand Union’s bank manager, this logo design appears to be simply as hollow as it’s spherical motif.
Creative review have more on this…

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)