Over the holiday weekend, word leaked that video game industry rock star Cliff Bleszinski (lead designer of the Gears of War franchise) is launching a new studio, Boss Key Productions. The brand new identity we created for Boss Key also found its way into the daylight as well.
But now it’s officially live, and we’re excited to show the world – just a prelude to the amazing things Boss Key has in store for gamers.
We always mention how much we love the LogoLounge wesbite and book series. So, it’s always a great honor for us to have our work included in another volume of the excellent and popular series. Some of our conceptual work for Mesí and final identity for Ignite are included in this volume.
Like a plot twist gone astray, the streaming film company, Netflix, has once again befuddled customers by reversing course with a recent brand announcement. Weeks ago, Netflix announced its intention to divide its streaming and physical mail business units into two separate entities, while simultaneously apologizing for recent price hikes. This effort was intended to kick off the renamed DVD mail service, christening it Qwikster. Apparently, public outcry and common sense won the day, as Netflix backtracked and rejiggered its plans.
This on-again, off-again game of brand Twister has damaged the Netflix name and its brand cache. While we can only guess at the business reasons that motivated these decisions, it’s plain to see how Netflix shot itself in the foot from a brand perspective.
At Hexanine, we believe it’s important to help nurture the next generation of designers, and that’s why we’re involved in mentorship and teaching. Also, we benefit from brushing up against the passion and growth of young designers, and find we get almost as much out of the experience as our students. To that end, we also like to occasionally showcase the standout work of our students here at our blog.
So, as part of Tim’s Brand Standards and Identity class at Chicago Portfolio School, here are identity redesign projects from two students, Diane Johns and Megan King.
Megan has redesigned the logo for the DVD/Blu-Ray publishers, Criterion. She’s done a great job customizing and streamlining an existing typeface for wordmark use, and subtly works in the traditional “widescreen” proportions as part of her mark.
And Diane has reimagined Barnes & Noble with her own redesign. This clever mark is cobbled together from typographic punctuation, with an approachable, offbeat style for 21st century reading.
Great work all the way around, ladies!
Logos and brand identity are an oft-misunderstood part of design. A logo is not a brand. A logo is not a brand identity. A logo is a crucial part of an overall brand identity, but it’s just one part of a larger toolbox that contains things like color palettes, brand platforms, photo styles, graphic patterns, positioning statements, and much, much more. This is well-traveled territory. But one thing that’s rarely discussed in logo and identity circles is timing. For clients, when is it a good time to rebrand your organization?
It depends on who you ask, but there are a lot of avenues where it makes sense to initiate a logo redesign. Many prospects and clients see identity design only as a first-stage project — to be initiated early in an organization’s life cycle — for startups and newly-minted organizations. But truly, a new identity is valuable for all seasons. If executed thoughtfully and properly, a redesign is a powerful weapon that can have maximum impact across a variety of moments during the life of your brand.
We’ve just added some work to our portfolio — the redesigned identity of our client and partners, iam8bit. Take a look at the link for more details.
During the research phase of a recent identity project, we spent some time revisiting numerous examples of what we like to call “fluid identities” — logo systems that use multiple iterations of a mark (or series of marks) to communicate a particular aspect of a brand. These might take the form of a logo that changes with each viewing, or a singular mark that gets impregnated with different imagery, depending on the context. At one point, these types of projects were few and far between, but now these isolated examples have grown into a full-blown trend. The days of the static logo are certainly not extinct, but this persistent way of thinking about malleable identities seems like a portend of things to come.
We’ve received lots of great work from the call for entries for our upcoming book, Damn Good: Top Designers Discuss Their All-Time Favorite Projects. But we’re not finished yet! We want to give you one last chance to enter your work in identity, print, web, packaging, illustration and axed projects, so we’re extending the deadline. The final, drop-dead date for submitting your work at our partner site is February 28th, 2011. So, if you’ve missed the initial entry window, now’s the time to get your work in. More details about entry and the book itself can be found in our earlier blog post. Damn Good will be released by HOW Design Books this coming November.
The redesigned website for Green Energy Reporter is now live. You can visit the new site itself, and read more about its creation on the Hexanine site.
Update: The Damn Good call for entries deadline has been extended to Monday, February 28th, 2011. More info here.
We are super excited to announce the official call for entries to our upcoming book, Damn Good: Top Designers Discuss Their All-Time Favorite Projects. Hexanine has partnered with HOW Design Books and Crescent Hill Books to deliver this design inspiration book, our very first!