Brand evolutions

Here's some brain fodder to play with the next time you're stuck in traffic: Evolution of Car Logos

Just look at the evolution of the SAAB badge. Amazing how much churn there is on the automotive branch of the tree for a brand which only emerged after WWII:

Myself, I like the 1949 badge the best. Don't like the screaming chicken so much. How does one say "Burt Reynolds" in Swedish?

As I look through this site, I have to admit that many of the older badge renditions are at least as compelling as their replacements, and often more so. Having been a brand manager at one point in my peripatetic career, I sense that the rationale for many brand revisions or logo redesigns are rooted more in internal politics and the need to do something tangible for one's yearly performance review than in market needs. In other words, most customers probably don't care if your new logo is slightly better than your old one, especially if they just finally got used to the old one, because it has only been the old for the three years that have passed since the last redesign. As with management, sometimes the best marketing may be no marketing at all...

Via Metacool

Which Blogs Should I Read?

Friends of mine in the industry who aren’t taken with blogs sometimes ask me which ones they should look at just to stay current. I looked through my RSS reader and picked the five I thought would be most helpful. They are

• Seth’s Blog (Seth Godin)
• TechCrunch
• O’Reilly Radar
• How to Change the World (Guy Kawasaki)
• Edge Perspectives with John Hagel

vía Noise Between Stations

Danish wind turbine eats itself

You know how we love wind turbines around here, but we love carnage even more -- so we can't get enough of this 200-foot tall Danish wind turbine shearing itself to bits after its brakes failed during a recent storm. The 10-year old windmill is the one of two different Vestas windmills to fail in Denmark in the past week -- the company is launching an investigation, but might we suggest selling tickets instead?

[Via BoingBoing]

Continue reading Danish wind turbine eats itself

An Evolution of Tech Company Logos

Neatorama has put together a nice little collection of progression of famous tech company logos.

You’ve seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?

The history lessons are nice, though one I’m a bit skeptical of the veracity:

Jobs thought that the overly complex [Newton] logo had something to do with the slow sales of the Apple I, so he commissioned Rob Janoff of the Regis McKenna Agency to design a new one. Janoff came up with the iconic rainbow-striped Apple logo used from 1976 to 1999.

Anyone have verification of whether Jobs actually thought this? While it would be amazing if a logo did have the actual power to slow down sales, I’m rather skeptical of that too.

vía Richardsona

Inflatable Tea House by Kengo Kuma

Japanese Tea Houses are among the most beautiful and serene structures on the planet, and are usually minimalist in design and modest in size. Kengo Kuma has built an inflatable one for the garden of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt. According to the Museum: "Kengo Kuma develops the traditional teahouse architecture further, while at the same time venturing onto entirely unexplored territory with regard to his design. In search of flexible buildings - Kuma uses the term “weak architecture” - he has arrived at a truly ephemeral structure with this project. ...

vía TreeHugger

Casulo: An Entire Apartment's Furniture in One Small Box

It might not look like it, but inside this box, there's an armoire, a desk, a height-adjustable stool, two more stools, a six-shelf bookcase, and a bed with a mattress. Casulo, the brilliant, modular setup designed by Marcel Krings & Sebastian Mühlhäuser, hides furnishings enough for an entire room -- or, heck, an entire apartment -- in a small 31"x47" (that's 80 cm x 120 cm) box. Two people can lift, carry, and assemble (and then disassemble, when it's time to move) each piece of furniture within the Casulo in about 10 minutes -- it requires no tools for assembly -- and every part of the boxy exterior is...

vía TreeHugger

Personalising "Cash"

vía Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect de Jan el 10/02/08

This pre-paid and top-up-able Starbucks card guides the customer to "treat this card like cash" - and log on to their web site to create a personalised design.

When the donkey work of transferring a pre-determined and shared value from one person to another can be carried out digitally, to what extent is it desirable to have a tangible representation of that value? In what contexts? And as with this card, to what extent should the customer be able to personalise the tangible representation of that value - to what extent should the customer be able to design and create their own cash?

Thinking about the range of tools to create and reproduce physical things - what are the likely forms this currency will take? And given the degree to which people find comfort in nostalgia, who will be the first to re-introduce the sea shell as a currency?