This is interesting, the Bunch design agency got a whole bunch (geddit?) of designers and illustrators they admired to ‘respond’ to their identity. As a result they got a whole load of variations on their logo which they’re now using as part of their identity. Very clever indeed, as commissioning all that work conventionally would be very expensive indeed.

A few of the results are shown on the CR blog page, but I picked my two favourites here. The blackletter style one is very interesting, as the negative spaces aren’t simply a reversed image of the implied continuation of the stroke, but an additional shape on the outer edge of that stroke. Very nice.

I came across this article and my immediate thought was, “The logo was designed?” I thought it was typed. Add a soft bevel and some colours and hey presto, a logo! But no. They got someone else to design it by typing it into Photoshop, add a soft bevel and some colours and hey presto, a logo! Now, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, or a bad logo really, but the justification makes me chuckle. How many times as a designer have you been asked to post-justify a piece of work when really you were using your instincts and your eye to produce something that fit the requirements? I’ve lost count.

It was playful and deceptively simple. The design subtle as to look almost non-designed, the reading effortless. The colors evoke memories of child play, but deftly stray from the color wheel strictures so as to hint to the inherent element of serendipity creeping into any search results page and the irreverance and boldness of the “I am feeling lucky” link. The texture and shading of each letter is done in an unobtrusive way resulting in lifting it from the page while giving it both weight and lightness. It is solid but there is also an ethereal quality to it.

Yes. Indeed. Quite. Fortunately for Google, just typing the company name in Catull works just fine too, ethereal quality or no.

As mentioned elsewhere, it appears that Xerox have rebranded, courtesy of Interbrand. There’s a pretty good critique of the new logo over on Brand New which I mostly agree with, apart from one thing. While the pixellated effect was (and is) rather cliché, Landor’s implementation of it was sophisticated and spoke well of what Xeros did, and still does. Sub-pixel anti-aliasing and high resolution screens notwithstanding, we still produce work in a pixellated environment, and it’s only when we print something that those pixels go away, so the big ‘X’ seemed perfectly appropriate for a company making printers, photocopiers and scanners and the like.

Clearly I’m not party to some vital information here, perhaps Xerox are planning to move into the manufacture of cricket, or petanque balls. Nice wordmark though.

No, it’s not a logo, it’s today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. It really looks like a logo though don’t you think? It reminds me of all the swooshes and planetary logos we’ve seen over the years, except this time it’s the real thing. That’s what it looks like.

I came across this today, Taiwan’s recycling logo. Note the effective use of white space — a reminder of the excellent FedEx logo.

Yes, it’s been around a while, but I don’t trawl for university logos very often. I came across the Coventry University logo today, and was immediately drawn to the calligraphic strokes forming the phoenix image — they remind me of the intaglio-printed lines on banknotes. I have quite a thing for banknote designs anyway. Interestingly, it seems the University decided that right-facing is future-looking, although the idea of using the phoenix refers quite specifically to the past (not that I disagree with their decision). The Wikipedia entry on the logo has this:

In the summer of 2006 the symbol was flipped on its vertical axis in order to portray the head of the phoenix looking to the right. The reason behind the decision was the desire to portray the university as looking forward rather than back.

Found via Computerlove, the portfolio site of James Stone, mimeArtist. It’s a nice site, but the thing that got my attention was the great logo, it’s beautifully expressive and simple. Wish I’d thought of it.