This holiday season, as I gather together with friends and family, I’ll be enjoying great food and conversation while trying to explain that my new job involves branding, not advertising. So imagine my delight when I discovered a new board game designed to demonstrate how well branding has infiltrated the collective human consciousness.
My biggest challenge with board games is simply getting people to play with me, but the challenge in “Brand Memory” from BIS Publishers is to find matching pairs of a brand, based solely on their characteristic color/style elements and a short description of the brand. The game shows you can swap a company’s name or slogan with different text and people will still recognize a well-known brand, simply based on the design elements.
I could see this game inciting a good-natured “who’s more important” debate between the writing and design teams here at TheFrameworks. As a writer, I’ll lob a preemptive strike over the desk by mentioning the Comic Sans Project. Its contributors have taken Comic Sans — the font favored by creators of school projects and office posters — and recreated famous brands with it “because Helvetica is sooo 2011.” Do people still recognize McDonald’s when the golden arches are golden mountain peaks? Absolutely. So take that, designers. I fearfully await your retaliation.
Speaking of Helvetica, if you haven’t yet caught the wonderful documentary about the font, seek it out (I streamed it through Netflix). You’ll never look at your Word document the same way again. Because Arial is sooo 2001.
“Oh, no,” you say. “There couldn’t be anything less interesting than watching a documentary about a font.” Au contraire, mon ami. The same folks who bring you the “Brand Memory” game offer the “Typography Memory Game” in which players must find matching pairs of the letter A in one of 25 different fonts. Your friends and family will experience minutes of enjoyment as they slowly realize they can’t tell the difference between Akzidenz Grotesk and Garamond, nor can they comprehend why you thought playing this game was a good idea.
Better yet, make your holiday celebration a theme night, by combining the two games and a viewing of the film. I guarantee you’ll never be asked to host another family gathering. On the other hand, I’d have a fabulous time.
Excuse me … I’ve got to tell Santa to add these games to my wish list.
Three weeks ago I was wandering around the streets of Manhattan in awe at the scale and grandeur of everything. Before I went I was told how The City of New York was the ‘greatest city in the world’ and it did not disappoint.
I’d wanted to visit since I was a child, having been fascinated by the promise of tall buildings, a Concorde flight (at the time), the Statue of Liberty and my discovery of the ‘I Love New York t-shirt logo’ as I called it then.
Although many may be familiar with the history behind New York’s main icons such as the Empire State building and the Statue of Liberty, very few know the story behind the I Love New York logo.
Allow me to enlighten you:
The logo (pictured on my t-shirt above) was designed in 1977 by graphic designer Milton Glaser originally as part of a marketing campaign for New York State, commissioned by William S. Doyle. Glaser created the logo for free, expecting it to only last the few months of the short campaign, but the logo fast became an icon and a direct association with New York City.
The logo continues to be used by the Official New York State Tourism board and can be found on numerous merchandise, much of which remains unofficial.
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, Glaser modified the logo as a sign of respect to read ‘I Love New York More Than Ever’, placing a black mark on the lower left of the heart to symbolise the approximate location of World Trade Center site on Manhattan Island.
So if you ever go to New York, make sure you grab a piece of history on a t-shirt and show that you ? New York too.
Today sees the beginning of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing and with it comes the 27th logo* to represent a city’s hosting of the Games.
From the iconic logos of Mexico 68 (designed by Lance Wyman) and Munich 1972 (designed by Otl Aicher) to the controversial logo for the upcoming London 2012 games (designed by Wolff Olins), the Olympics has inspired designers throughout the world to produce some intriguing and brilliant logo designs.
The ‘Unofficial 2008 Beijing Olympics Blog’ has collated an extensive list of all the Olympic logos from 1896 through to the logo for London’s hosting of the Olympics in 2012 (logos for the Winter Games are omitted but can be found here). It is interesting to see which logos have the longevity of a true timeless classic and which logos immediately feel outdated.
Of course the true Olympic logo that will never feel outdated is the logo of the five coloured interlocking rings designed in the 1920s by Baron Pierre de Coubertin. With each ring representing one of the five continents and at least one of the five colours appearing in every national flag, it has to be one of the greatest logos ever created and a true example of simplicity and excellence in design.
The opening ceremony begins at 13:00 (BST) and the Games run until 24th August.
[*The three missing logos belong to the 1916, 1940 and 1944 Games which were all cancelled because of war.]
