News:Snøhetta has designed a visual identity for Oslo‘s bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Snøhetta, an architecture and design firm in Oslo and New York, developed a design that combines geometric shapes taken from the letter O and the number zero, as well as forms that recur in the number two and the letter S.
The rings of the Olympic logo informed the repetition of circles and the choice of colour palette used to render the simple forms.
“The identity of Oslo 2022’s visual language honours the inherent simplicity and openness in Nordic culture,” said the designers in a statement.
“By balancing playful graphics and strict geometry, the identity represents both the celebration of the Games and the solid planning of the Norwegian bid.”
As part of the development process, Snøhetta worked with the bid team to create an initial identity without a logo for the funding application to the Norwegian government. The designers then created the logo and typography, which also included creating architectural elements and signage for a presentation during the recent Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics.
The identity was finally applied to an application document submitted to the International Olympic Committee in March.
Some of the material created by the designers for the bid, including maps of the potential venues, was required to include content and colour coding determined by the IOC.
Branded material produced to demonstrate the application of the identity includes brochures, business cards, a website and a CD ROM, onto which the designers silkscreened the logo’s negative space in white, allowing the iridescent surface of the CDs to recreate the colours of the logo.
Oslo is competing with Kraków in Poland, Almaty in Kazakhstan, Lviv in Ukraine and the Chinese capital Beijing for the right to host the Games, with the winner due to be announced on 31 July 2015.
“They needed a unifying idea, regardless of whether you’re an archivist in white gloves taking care of treasures in film, or a Steven Spielberg type,” said 180LA’s chief creative officer William Gelner.
The famous silhouette of the golden statue presented to award winners sits within the “A” in “Oscars” and is also used inversely on a gold triangle to stand for “Academy”.
A sans-serif typeface was chosen as the unifying font, used in all capitals and coloured gold. This font will be used on the envelopes concealing winners’ names during the event this weekend.
Previous logo of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science
The previous logo, which also features the statuette, had been in use by the Academy since the 1920s.
The eighty-sixth Oscars will take place on Sunday 2 March at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre in LA.
News: Danish design brand Carl Hansen & Søn has changed its logo back to one originally created by legendary furniture designer Hans J. Wegner in 1950, in honour of the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Carl Hansen & Søn produces many of Wegner’s most iconic furniture designs and has once again adopted the logo created by the Danish designer shortly after he began collaborating with the firm.
“The 100th anniversary [of Wegner’s birth] offers Carl Hansen & Søn an ideal opportunity to return to Wegner’s original logo,” said the company’s CEO Knud Erik Hansen.
The original logo designed by Hans J. Wegner was used from the 1950s until the 1980s
“With the new logo, we are adding another page to Carl Hansen & Søn’s history and visually expressing our transformation from a traditional production company into a modern design enterprise – still clearly referencing our 100-year furniture history, but now with a visual identity that matches the company’s present-day position as an internationally oriented design player,” he added.
The logo (main image) comprises a red circle surrounding the initials of the family-run company, which are written in a curving font that evokes the organic modernism popular in Scandinavia at the time of its design.
It was originally used from the 1950s until the mid-1980s, when the company commissioned a new logo with a blue square and a white letter C.
“Wegner’s logo is meaningful to us on several levels,” said Erik Hansen. “The logo visually expresses that at its core, the company is passionate about design and creativity. At the same time, the logo reinforces the strong ties that for decades have linked Wegner with Carl Hansen & Søn.”
CH24 Wishbone chair designed by Hans J. Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn in 1949
The company was founded by Carl Hansen in Odense, Denmark, in 1908 and began collaborating with Hans J. Wegner in 1949. Among the classic pieces that Wegner created for Carl Hansen & Søn are the Wishbone, Shell and Wing chairs.
Wegner is known to have designed more than 500 chairs prior to his death in January 2007, over 100 of which have been put into production.
Here’s some more information from Carl Hansen & Søn:
Carl Hansen & Søn introduces new logo designed by Wegner
Carl Hansen & Søn has changed its logo to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Hans J. Wegner’s birth. The logo, designed by Wegner in 1950, revitalizes Carl Hansen & Søn’s visual identity to reflect a modern design company. The logo is one more testament to Wegner’s brilliant, visionary talent.
Carl Hansen & Søn is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Hans J. Wegner’s birthday by launching a logo Wegner himself designed in 1950. The round logo encircles the family-run company’s initials on a red background in soft, organically curved lines.
The logo was originally used from the 1950s until the mid-1980s, when Carl Hansen & Søn asked architect Bernt to design a new logo in the shape of a blue square marked with a contrasting, white letter C in reference to the initial letter in the company name.
CH07 Shell chair designed by Hans J. Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn in 1963
The 100th anniversary offers Carl Hansen & Søn an ideal opportunity to return to Wegner’s original logo. “With the new logo, we are adding another page to Carl Hansen & Søn’s history and visually expressing our transformation from a traditional production company into a modern design enterprise – still clearly referencing our 100-year furniture history, but now with a visual identity that matches the company’s present-day position as an internationally oriented design player,” says Carl Hansen & Søn’s CEO Knud Erik Hansen.
Wegner’s timeless logo perfectly communicates Carl Hansen & Søn’s approach to furniture production – craftsmanship, quality and tradition reflected in long-lived furniture produced using the finest materials and with the utmost consideration for the environment. Knud Erik Hansen continues, “Wegner’s logo is meaningful to us on several levels. The logo visually expresses that at its core, the company is passionate about design and creativity. At the same time, the logo reinforces the strong ties that for decades have linked Wegner with Carl Hansen & Søn. Given the fact that the logo was originally designed by Wegner, it was just a question of finding the right occasion to reintroduce it, and what better occasion than Wegner’s 100th birthday?”
CH445 Wing chair designed by Hans J. Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn in 1960
The story of the collaboration between Wegner and Carl Hansen & Søn dates back 65 years. In 1949, Carl Hansen & Søn, which today has over a century-long tradition of proud craftsmanship to its name, became one of the creative playgrounds Wegner would frequent over the years. The creative partnership produced a series of chairs that went on to become modern classics and treasured collector’s items around the world. Among them are Wegner’s iconic Wishbone Chair, Shell Chair and Wing Chair.
This year, Carl Hansen & Søn will also launch several new Wegner pieces. Both the furniture and the logo pay tribute to Wegner’s remarkable sense of design and craftsmanship.
News: New York technology firm Squarespace has published a statement slamming criticism that its new service for creating logos demeans the role of the graphic designer.
Following the launch of Squarespace Logo last week, designers took to Twitter to express their views on the online design tool, with some branding it as “disgusting” and “one giant F U to entire design community”.
Squarespace Logo’s user interface allows users to customise the design of their logo
The furore provoked Squarespace founder Anthony Casalena to post an addendum to a statement on the project’s blog, explaining its position regarding the importance of professional graphic designers:
“We’ve seen a number of comments online about Squarespace Logo being positioned as a replacement for professional designers,” the statement read. “Squarespace Logo is a basic tool for individuals and small businesses with limited resources to create a simple identity for themselves. It is not a replacement for the brand identity a professional designer can craft and deserves to be compensated for.”
“We expect Logo, much like Squarespace itself, to drive more people to appreciate the importance of design, leading to increased demand for professional creative services,” the statement continued. “Similarly, the fees generated by Squarespace Logo are used in part to compensate the graphic designers who contribute their work.”
Logos produced with Squarespace’s tool can be used for various commercial purposes including websites
Squarespace, which launched in 2004 as a service for developing simple websites based on standard templates, teamed up with online icon database The Noun Project to create the new logo design tool.
It allows users to choose from a range of over 7000 basic icons and manipulate them to their own specifications, adding text, changing colours, proportions and the alignment of the various components to produce a logo that can be used on websites, business cards and other branded material.
The vector icons that are available on the site are submitted by graphic designers, who are credited on the interface page and receive a royalty every time their icon is specified for a project.
Once customers have designed their logo they can download a high resolution version for commercial use by paying $10. The service is free to existing Squarespace customers.
The icons available range from simple shapes to more sophisticated vector drawings
Reaction on Twitter ranged from outrage about the tool seeming to oversimplify the process of brand identity creation, to support for Squarespace’s attempt to make graphic design more accessible to novices.
“At first I kind of thought everyone was overreacting about #squarespacelogo until I saw how much of a mockery it makes of my profession,” said a tweet from @carolineroyce.
“Honestly, if you’re worried that #squarespacelogo will replace your line of design work, you must not be that good at design,” countered @gburnham.
The online tool allows users to see how their logo would look on a t-shirt
Critics who published articles about the issue are largely in favour of the way the service enables users with little knowledge of graphic design to produce simple and attractive logos, while recognising that brand identity is a specialist skill that remains the domain of professional designers.
“Squarespace’s Logo service isn’t in competition with the work of good designers,” said Tom Actman of Creative Review. “It’s merely a (pretty good) creative tool to help those visualise their own ideas.”
Tina Roth Eisenberg of graphic design blog Swiss Miss added: “Am I super thrilled that [Squarespace] are saying ‘anyone can design a great logo’, not really, but that’s not the point. Their logo builder is not much different than a tool like Adobe Illustrator.”
News: internet giant Google has unveiled a simplified logo that flattens its colours and ditches the drop shadow.
Following days of speculation, Google revealed the news in a blog post yesterday. The new logo will appear within a redesigned version of the search engine’s homepage – the most visited website in the world.
Existing logo
“As part of this design, we’ve also refined the colour palette and letter shapes of the Google logo,” wrote Eddie Kessler.
The new homepage will be rolled out to users in upcoming weeks and will feature a revised menu bar that groups links into an “app launcher” on the right-hand side of the page, rather than within the existing black menu bar.
The new logo is more in line with the cleaner graphics and uncluttered interfaces of Apple’s iOS 7 operating system, which was launched worldwide this week.
« Emerging from the Logos » est une série de posters imprimés « en édition limitée » représentant uniquement les sponsors des différents modèles de voitures de Formule 1. Imaginées par le londonien Yoni Alter, ces visuels composés de logos permettent de deviner la forme des monoplaces Red Bull, Ferrari ou encore Lotus.
Dutch graphics studio Experimental Jetset has redesigned the logo for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York as a slender W that changes shape to respond to its setting (+ movie).
Experimental Jetset developed the graphic identity around the concept of a “responsive W” that forms both a symbol of the Whitney and a framework for accompanying text and images.
“We came up with the idea of the zig-zag line, with the zig-zag being a metaphor for a non-simplistic, more complicated (and thus more interesting) history of art,” say the designers.
“We think the line also represents a pulse, a beat – the heartbeat of New York, of the USA. It shows the Whitney as an institute that is breathing (in and out), an institute that is open and closed at the same time.”
The designers specified Neue Haas Grotesk – a redrawn version of a 1950s Swiss typeface – for any text positioned alongside the logo, while any images can be positioned underneath.
“We began to explore the possibilities of the W as a frame to put work in, or a stage to place work on,” they explain. “The lines [of the W] can be seen as borders, arrows, connections [or] columns.”
The new graphic identity replaces the Whitney’s thirteen-year-old logo, designed by Abbott Miller of Pentagram, and marks a period of change that will see the museum relocate to a new building by architect Renzo Piano, set to open in 2015.
As the Whitney approaches the opening of its new building in 2015, museum staff are taking stock of all aspects of programming and operations. While much of this work is happening behind the scenes, one very visible aspect of this focus is the Whitney’s graphic identity. While the museum has changed considerably in the thirteen years since it introduced the word mark designed by Abbott Miller of Pentagram, even more extensive institutional changes will come with the move downtown.
Two years ago, Museum staff began a thoughtful internal dialogue regarding the Whitney’s graphic identity and selected the design studio Experimental Jetset to develop an approach which embraces the spirit of the Museum while serving as a visual ambassador for our new building. The result is a distinctive and inventive graphic system that literally responds to art — a fundamental attribute of the Whitney since its founding in 1930. This dynamic identity, which the designers refer to as the “responsive ‘W'” also illustrates the Museum’s ever-changing nature. In the upcoming years it will provide an important point of continuity for members, visitors, and the public during the transition to the new space.
Graphic designer Ludovic Houplain and his partners François Alaux and Hervé de Crécy of H5 agency made a splash in 2009 when they produced a short film depicting a world composed entirely out of logos. The 16-minute film, “Logorama” went on to win an Academy Award and gave H5…
The pared-down logos found on vintage Japanese cameras inspired Istanbul-based design consultancy Antrepo to create conceptual minimal logos for web brands like Facebook, Google and YouTube (+ slideshow).
Antrepo, led by designer Mehmet Gozetlik, based the Made in Japan project on 35mm SLR cameras manufactured in the 1970s and 1980s.
The designers noticed that cameras made by Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Minolta in that period all featured simple line drawings in place of the brands’ logos, which were normally much bolder.
The line drawings cut production costs by making them easier to apply to the metal camera bodies, Gozetlik explained to Dezeen.
Antrepo took the colourful logos of contemporary web-based companies and services like Instagram, eBay and Twitter and turned them into stark monochrome designs.
The new logos appear to be etched into metal, echoing the appearance of the vintage cameras.
Canon AE-1, Nikon FTn, Ashai Pentax ESII, Minolta XG-1 – these cameras are some of the Japanese 35mm SLR cameras from the vintage ’70s and ’80s, the “Made in Japan” era, when Japan set the global standard of producing quality.
When we take a look at the vintage 35mm cameras, we notice that almost all of these brands used the same style for their logos and typography – line-based logos and extended-outline fonts.
Almost all of these brands used bold logos on their packaging or advertising in the ’70s and ’80s.
The production industry created line-based logos for the metal bodies, probably to cut down the production costs. So we try to see the digital world in the same perspective of this vintage style.
Competition:Dezeen Watch Store features in this new book about brand identities that use dynamic graphic design by designer and author Irene Ontwerp, and Dezeen readers can win one of five copies.
Dynamic Identities presents examples of branding, logos and marketing material with design systems that allow them to change and generate new versions depending on various input factors.
The Dezeen Watch Store identity features a timepiece with a constantly changing pattern of colours and segments according to the time of day, the month and the viewer’s geographic location, and was created by designers Zerofee who share a building with Dezeen. See it in action on the Dezeen Watch Store website.
In the book, each project is explained with information about the brand and designers, alongside large images displaying the artwork both on its own and in context.
A lenticular cover features a selection of the logos that morph when the book is tilted to demonstrate the way they change.
To enter this competition email your name, age, gender, occupation, and delivery address and telephone number to competitions@dezeen.com with “Dynamic Identities” in the subject line. We won’t pass your information on to anyone else; we just want to know a little about our readers. Read our privacy policy here.
Competition closes 16 November 2012. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
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