providing graphic design, branding, photography and marketing expertise to denver and the world

Quote of the Week:

Using another organization's good-brand-will to make yours seem better

Is it just me, or does this logo:

Look a lot like this logo:

????

The top logo is the visual mark for a new Starbucks campaign called "Shared Planet". The bottom logo belongs to the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, I can see that they're not identical, but they are similar enough that If I was the EPA and had a bone to pick with Starbucks for some other reason (say they were also deforesting West Virginia mountaintops as part of some nefarious plan to eliminate the domestic coffee production market---which they aren't) I'd sure look into how to sue them for infringement.

But even if it's not technically (or legally) infringing, does it do any good for Starbucks to come so close to the EPA's brand? In this case, it certainly does. The Shared Planet campaign is all about environmental responsibility, so any goodwill created by the brand image of the EPA would certainly help Shared Planet, if it happens to rub off on the viewer's mind that way. I would also ask: "what if a close association with an organization put off potential buyers who, while admiring of Starbuck's environmental and ethical efforts, want Starbucks to be Starbucks, and the EPA to be the EPA?"

Here's another way of looking at the two:

Labels: branding, bug

posted at 8:00 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

---

3.03.2009

The official Recovery and Reinvestment Act project logo

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has a logo, which will appear on all projects funded by the Act:

It's nice, I suppose. One interesting thing I noticed is the upper left borders of the two stars that intersect with the blue background border (in the upper left quadrant of the logo) aren't there. These two stars look like they've opened up, blossomed, perhaps, into the white space of the circular inner border.

Another nit-picky thing: the "RECOVERY.ORG" typography is very small. If you're using it at the size you see on this screen, it's about 14 points in size (nice use of old standby Trade Gothic, BTW. Is there a subliminal message to be had there, in the use of a typeface whose name reflects commerce?). When this mark is used in smaller sizes, the type is going to become illegible. I could see this happening when the ARRA money is being used along with other funding for a large project, and promotional roadside signs, posters, and web banners have to fit a lot of logos into a small space (they become, in PR parlance, "bugs".)

The little reverse swiss cross that forms the center of the big gear in the lower right quadrant of the mark...it alludes to the health plan reform, perhaps, as being integral to the recovery?

[3/3/09 22:24] UPDATE: This emblem, along with one specific to transportation projects, was designed by MODE in Chicago. Um, if you don't know by now, they did the Obama "O". (I can't wait for a Denverite to be President: more branding work for us Queen City designers...).

Other comments? Post them below!

image via abc news

by the way: looks like the folks over at recovery.gov are using Numbers for their charting:

Labels: branding, bug, design, graphic design, illustration, information graphics, politics, typography, usability

posted at 2:28 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

---

2.21.2008

Apparently, it was just a bruise on that banana

Yesterday's post about not getting advance notice about the AIGA/CO Steven Sagmeister talk prompted a timely, lovely response from AIGA/Colorado's President. Read it here. If you didn't get a notice, it might have been a bug in the system that sends e-mail info from AIGA/National to AIGA/CO's folks. If you've had an issue, contact AIGA/CO to let them know, as it might help them track down what happened.

Labels: aiga, bug, colorado

posted at 2:05 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

---

5.22.2007

Flash Bug: Find/Replace doesn't work with Carriage Returns in the string

There's not much else to report other than what you see in the title of this post: In Flash CS3, trying to Find a string that contains a carriage return returns a negative result. This, obviously, sucks. Especially when you need to modify, say, a hundred or so instances of an ActionScript across a dozen or so files.

I reported this to Adobe a couple of weeks ago, when I first ran across this issue. They confirmed that it was, indeed, a bug, and submitted a bug report on it. So, hopefully, it will get fixed in the next update.

Now if they could just get the documentation not to suck so much, Flash might actually be a decent program....

Labels: adobe, bug, CS3, flash, software

posted at 7:47 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

---

---