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Tech NewsThis Giant Submarine Destroying a City Street Is Actually an Ad
Life is strange and unpredictable. Some things have to be seen to be believed, and even then it can be tough to trust your own peepers. Take Milan’s Piazza Mercanti, for instance. It recently became home to what appears to be a submarine bursting through the asphalt. Wait, what? Whether or not anyone questioned how … Continued
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Tech NewsThe US Army Guide That Teaches Soldiers To Recognize Terrorist Logos
Modern warfare is defined by ambiguity—and with it, soldiers (and training) have had to adapt. Posted online this week, a U.S. Army document guides soldiers through the rigors of recognizing terrorist and insurgent groups in the wild. Not through weaponry or language, but through branding. Written by the U.S. Army Training And Doctrine Command in … Continued
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Tech News
Why We Hate Change
The horrors of New Coke have not been easy for the American public to forget. We do not handle change well, especially when it comes to the brands that we’ve been conditioned to love. But did New Coke really taste that bad? And likewise, is the new Yahoo! logo really that atrocious? And is iOS7 … Continued
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Tech News
Coke Had to Cancel a Contest After a Bottle Cap Called Someone “Retard”
It’s no fun to be called names, but usually you only have to worry about it from people. That’s not always the case, as a Canadian woman learned when she cracked open a refreshing Vitamin water and was met with “YOU RETARD.” That’s one hell of a glitch. It wasn’t just a mouthy bottle of … Continued
By Eric Limer -
Tech News
6 Cities and States Reinventing Themselves Through Branding
Is it possible to distill the character of a city into a single, striking logo? In some ways it seems crass to (re)brand a place, reducing the complexity of a locale into to what is, essentially, a marketing campaign. Done well, however, the efforts can unite locals and lure leisure travelers, who bring with them … Continued
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Tech News
Are Any of These 29 Decoy Yahoo! Logos Better Than the Original?
Tonight, at midnight Eastern Standard Time, Yahoo! will unveil its new logo. If you’re confused—yes, Yahoo! has been “unveiling a new logo” (read: comic sans rendering of Yahoo!) at midnight for the past 29 days. It’s all part of an unusual plan to evade the virulent public backlash that has haunted many recent corporate rebrands. … Continued
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io9
Cover designs for books that don’t exist (but should)
As part of his Masters of Branding study at the School of Visual Arts, Tyler Adam Smith is creating 100 covers for books that should be written, from goofy snarks at popular authors to imagined sequels to beloved books. Designer Debbie Millman, who chairs the branding department, charged each student in the program to come … Continued
By Lauren Davis -
Tech News
A Guide to the Fascinating Secret Language of Cattle Branding
The concept of cattle branding may make some people squeamish, but the ancient practice is one of the main factors keeping the world’s cattle trade from falling into chaos. Of course, cattle rustlers snatching your steers was more of a problem in the mid-1800’s, but there’s still no better way of keeping your stock in … Continued
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Tech NewsHow One of the World’s Most Recognizable Band Logos Got Its Shape
The Black Flag logo is sort of like the Coca-Cola script: it’s been subverted and remixed so many times, it’s become bigger than its original intended use. Now, thanks to a mini-documentary produced by Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, we know the fascinating story behind the creation of the iconic mark—which, according to Henry … Continued
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Tech News
The Age of the Anti-Logo: Why Museums Are Shedding Their Idenities
Designing a museum logo used to be a simple. Maybe you chose the outline of the building facade. Or a staid serif logotype. Or hell, just the heraldic seal of whatever aristocrat was underwriting the whole operation. But in an era of faltering endowments and fickle audiences, many museums are turning to high-concept graphic design … Continued
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Tech NewsWhat M&M, A&W, and Dozens of Other Acronyms and Initialisms Really Mean
As small businesses grow into large corporations that have to deal with mergers and hostile takeovers, their identities and branding similarly grow, evolve, and often end up being a mish-mash of various names which are then shrunk into acronyms and initialisms to make them easier to remember. A similar thing is done for companies named … Continued
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Tech News
The Logos of Terrorist Organizations Predictably Love Using Guns
In a book called Branding Terror, Francesco Trivini Bellini and former United Nations counter-terrorism analyst Artur Beifuss compiled the logos and brand identities of terrorist organizations “from al-Qaeda to the Real IRA” and analyzed them as they would any logo. It’s fascinating to approach the identity of the terrorists from a graphic design perspective. Branding … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
How Famous Logos Have Changed Over Time
All the logos you see around you? They’re eventually going to change some day. It might be because they get outdated or it might be because of a new CEO’s quirky taste or it might because the company has some vain hope to rebrand themselves as more modern or more friendly or more whatever it … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
The Walking Dead: Season 3 on Blu-ray Comes In This Creepy Cabinet of Zombie Heads
If you’re thinking about starting a collection of limited edition Blu-ray sets for your favorite movies and TV shows, you better make sure you’ve got ample shelf space on your home entertainment center for a bunch of disembodied zombie noggins. Available for pre-order for $105, the limited edition Blu-ray collection of The Walking Dead: Season … Continued
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io9
What if corporations sponsored superheroes?
Many of our favorite superheroes are wealthy, sponsored by the government, or otherwise manage to scrape together the funds to keep up their crime-fighting lifestyles. But what if superheroes instead took on corporate sponsorships, bearing the colors and logo of whichever company paid their way? Would city-shattering battles turn into scenes of corporate warfare? That’s … Continued
By Lauren Davis -
Tech News
I Wish More Companies Had Simple Logos Like This
Inspired by the beautiful typography-centric logos of Japanese cameras in the 70’s and 80’s, design firm Antrepo re-imagined the logos of tech companies by stripping them down to their essence. What resulted were line-based logos that’re clean, light and forever classic. Antrepo said: When we take a look at the vintage 35 mm cameras, we … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
Vintage Packaging of Famous Products Makes Me Want to Live in Yesterday
We just went to CES and saw a lot of the gadgets we’ll be playing with in the future. But it didn’t make me as excited as seeing all of these old products with vintage packaging. I wish every product could go back to its vintage packaging. The Listerine bottle is probably my favorite. It … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech NewsGadgets
Ugh, Verizon Plastered Its Logo on the Samsung Galaxy Note II Home Button
This is awful. Utterly, completely, corporate suit wearing, slicked back hair smelling, awful. Verizon stamped its logo on top of the new Samsung Galaxy Note II. Do you see it? Yes. That’s right, the Verizon logo is on the freaking phone’s home button. Covering it. Are you kidding me. It looks like a joke or … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
What Junk Food Should Actually Be Called
You may think you’re eating Cheetos and Lunchables but what you’re really eating is spray-painted styrofoam peanuts and your mom giving up on you. And they should be called that! Smosh hilariously renamed all your favorite junk food to something much more accurate. I haven’t had a fruit roll up in years and I never … Continued
By Casey Chan -
Tech News
Reversing Logos with Different Brands Is So Confusing
We’ve seen reversed brand logos before but not to the extent of these brand reversals by Graham Smith. He takes the original logo, color and all, and swaps them out with a different brand name. What’s crazy is that though sometimes you don’t notice the difference, most of the times your brain gets so confused, … Continued
By Casey Chan