Qatar is making its case for the 2022 World Cup. The identity shown above conceived by Future Brand artfully combines the concepts of international football and Qatari heritage, officials said.
The 32 pentagons represent the surface of a football, using colours that reflect, what is claimed to be, the natural heritage of Qatar—warm, luminescent colours of sand and sun which spiral inwards, alongside the azure blues of the sea.
The people of Qatar will be anxiously waiting for the voting process to begin which is set for December 2010. If selected it would bring the World Cup to the Middle East for the first time in its history.
“The first global sports event in the Middle East provides an opportunity for greater understanding and unity between the Arab and Western worlds and can inspire enthusiastic support from football fans young and old across the entire region.”
While grabbing a cup of coffee at our local café, we came across an interesting line of apparel cleverly titled ?RU. Each item contained slogans such as “Mixed to Perfection” and “Hybrid Vigor.” The concept behind the ?RU brand acknowledges the fastest growing group in the United States—people of mixed race, or the “multi-racials.” For more info on this burgeoning population, click on this.
Our discovery of this multi-cultural line also happened to correspond with the 5th annual celebration of “Loving Day” which occurred on June 12th of this year. Loving Day commemorates the landmark decision to ban what was then termed miscegenation, or in other words, interracial marriage. Created by Writer, Lori L. Tharps and Art Director, Tesia Barone, ?RU is the embodiment of the progress made in the US in overturning oppression and embracing our estranged yet interconnected roots.
Lori Tharps shares the motivation behind the new line: ” As the mother of two mixed kids and a journalist who often writes about race and identity, I knew that the phrase ‘What are you?’ is one of the most annoyingly pervasive questions people ask of those who don’t look like the stereotypical definitions we have for racial categories. I write about these issues, but I wanted to do something more. I wanted to bring the question and the answers out in the open and hopefully neutralize some of the pain and annoyance associated with identity politics. I wanted to start a public conversation but I wanted to do it in a positive and fun way.”
In regards to the graphic treatment, co-founder Tesia Barone explains: “The identity works very well in both its graphic treatment and naming. The goal was to turn what can be an annoying question, into an opportunity for discussion. The combination of symbols and letters to represent that question is how we frequently communicate in the current age of texting & instant-messaging. The overall effect is meant to feel bold, slightly intrusive, and intriguing at the same time.”
In addition to their tees and pins, ?RU is in the process of developing additional products such as socks, flip-flops, and mittens. Stay tuned, as we’ll provide you with the latest on this inspiring, identity-embracing apparel as it becomes available.
Here’s a video they put together together to explain what they are doing.
Turner Duckworth continues its solid work for Coca Cola with a new line of limited edition cans to bring in summer. The first can featuring a Sunglass icon (above, far left) was launched this week. The remaining four designs are set to hit stores over the next two months.
The video below explains the work Turner Duckworth has developed for the leading soft drink company.
The talk will be at 8:00pm on Thursday, May 21st, 2009. It will be in (Braun Hall, Building 320) in Room 105 at Stanford University. Hope to see you there!
Wipperfürth is a partner at Dial House in San Francisco. He is the author of Brand Hijack, and upcoming books, The Co-Creation Myth and The Fringe Manifesto. Dial House is part think-tank and part creative hot shop. The client list is diverse: from fringe (Napster, Doc Martens, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Jones Soda, Red Stripe, Altoids) to cutting edge (Current TV, New Yorker Magazine) to blue chip (Diageo, IBM, P&G/Clorox, Toyota, Coca-Cola). Projects range from innovative strategy, innovative research, meaningful creative expressions with DIY production to brand innovation. In earlier work, Wipperfürth had interviewed actual cult members and people in "consumer cults" (like Apple or Harley-Davidson fanatics) and made fascinating insights about their similarities.
In 1994 Paula Scher developed the brand identity for the Public Theater that pushed the norm with its playful, bold typgraphy. Her designs have recently been honored by the Art Directors Club.
The New York City Opera is the latest in a slew of NYC cultural institutions to overhaul their image. George Steel, the Opera’s new ambitious director hired esteemed design studio 2X4 to develop their new identity that is bold, direct, and confident in its treatment and application.
The dot triggers a philosophical discussion. City Opera is a bare-bones operation that produces spare versions of a luxury product. In theory, that could make it the ideal cultural entity for this lean age: What better way to forget about your troubles than to watch people sing about worse ones? “Luxury needs to engage ideas,” Sellers says. “Opera deals with darkness and schizophrenia, and in a time when we’ve been so deluded, that directness is reassuring.” She stops talking. The black dot sits ominously on the table, and for a moment no one speaks. Finally, Steel smiles, and the room relaxes. “I love the graphic strength,” he says. “I love it. We have a swell season, and we want it to be, Bam! Bam! This is what we’re doing: You got a problem with that?”
While most soft drinks are sweetened by High Fructose Corn Syrup the “throwback” products per Pepsi, are “sweetened with natural sugar, a blend of cane sugar and beet sugar.”
Source: Pepsi-Cola North America Beverages
“The Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback packaging feature a retro look and are sweetened with natural sugar, just as they were back in the ’60s and ’70s, to give consumers a taste of the past”
Head over to Bevreview.com for an in depth look at the series.
Hmmm…. Something to muddle over. Johnson Banks has a whole commentary that explains BBH’sprocess behind finding their new logo for BBH Labs.
Excerpt from Johnson Banks Blog: In their brief they do say ‘in exploring new approaches to creative collaboration, we post this brief well aware of the debate around the Crowdspring business model within the design community. Our interest lies in finding fresh, new creative talent efficiently. It is not in our interest to undercut existing market value design fees. Therefore we appeal to the Crowdspring community in the same way our prospective clients would approach ad agencies in an open pitch. We ask that designers submit only rough comps to this brief’.
We’d imagine that they’re pretty pleased then with the 1086 (Update: 1749) entries so far, mainly riffing around their agency symbol, the black sheep. Give that there are still three days to go to the deadline, perhaps they’ll get 1,500 entries, which would be a simple equation of a dollar per idea. Wouldn’t that be nice and neat?
Maybe their next move will be to ask for some ideas for their new client, eBAY Europe, just won, an account worth a rather hefty £22 million pounds? Perhaps not.
It’s difficult to write an end-line for this. Suffice it to say it’s a ‘white sheep’ approach to commissioning design that we would never have expected from an agency of BBH’s stature.
Vanilla Bicycles, a custom hand-built bicycle framebuilder, is known for doing everything right. They have raised the bar with Vanilla-branded pit boots for the cyclocross aficionado. Well played.
We came across the final logos for the 4 remaining host cities (Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo) for the 2016 Olympic games. They are all actually quite nice, much improved from the 2012 London mark that has gotten its share of bad press. The Olympic committee will make their final decision in October of this year.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
