Make my Logo brand bigger.
We are often confronted to a dilemna when developing identity for a new brand. With creating a new visual language, where does consistancy become copy and paste and how do you expand brand recognition by not using the same logo mark anywhere? Over the time and experience I became I big supporter of brand identities that develop a language and visual system, rather than really focus on implementing and applying a same design on as many formats and platforms as possible.
Today it remain one of the most difficult sells to corporation because the brand is an important asset that can be measured in billions of dollars (Coca Cola, the brand and not of the brick and mortar assets, was valued in 2002 at 69.6 billion dollars). Many executives have a hard time buying into a mutable identity that express a brand through variations of visuals as opposed to the strategy or repetition and memorizations.
One of the reasons I think variable visual for brands are lot more interesting is because when well crafted they extend to the infinite the reach of the brand in a 360 degree radius. We live in a era of flexibilty and maleability where brands are manipulated and shaped by the end user (think AOL’s new brand by Wolf Ollins – although I criticized the quick rendition as a shortcut to express an idea earlier on this blog, I believe the strategic approach is correct)
Today brands are a lot more pervasive and need to conquer a lot more of our selective minds and taste.
An evolutive brand is also showing more depth and more meaning than one that just satisfy itself by just replicating an icon all over.
Here at two great examples of this case of mutative brands where the logo isn’t really the logo: Saks Fifth Avenue by Michael Bierut at Pentagram and The City of Melbourne Identity by Landor Australia.
And the city of Melbourne below
These examples shows that a brand is a lot more than a logo and how it is applied to stationery or a website. Its in fact a company largest assets because it convey its vision and philosophy as well as its way of communicating through a visual language.
