So You Think You’re a Fun Couple?
For the past few months, we have been working with our friends at The Bistro at South River to launch their latest promotion, The Bistro Ultimate Wedding Giveaway.
Museum Mark Making
This week I wanted to acknowledge some truly exquisite mark making—the kind of branding that makes you eat your heart out. Iconic, timeless, balanced and beautifully refined. A few of the worlds’ most well known and respected Museums also boast some seriously awesome identities.
Grocery Store Time Machine
Way back in 2009, I posted about some vintage-inspired cereal packaging that I spotted at my local Target store. Well, it’s 2011 and we seem to have taken another step back in time! I was doing some grocery shopping and came across a really cool “vintage” Heinz Ketchup bottle, that I just had to have. [...]
Branding Tourism: Designing A Logo for a Nation
How do you brand an entire country? It’s a difficult task, but an important one. Countries brand themselves in the tourism industry to attract visitors and boost revenue, but it also helps form a national identity and a sense of pride.
Your Brain on Logos
Every minute we are inadvertently bombarded by images and marks that represent brands. Just sitting at your desk you can probably count far beyond a dozen around you. Rarely do we think twice about the significance of these marks but we may be taking them into consideration more than we are consciously aware of. According to a [...]
New Work: Seeds of Genius
Hot off the press! We just received the new company overview brochure for Seeds of Genius. The woman-owned IT solutions company, based in Columbia, MD, approached us with the goal to create an informative brochure that captured their human side. In a sea of acronyms, their name alone stands out among IT companies. But how do [...]
Something Real in Times of Hunches
Through these economic times, one trend in advertising that we have seen surface is the attempt to communicate a message of either support, “we’re there with you”, or longevity, “we’re not going anywhere”. We saw some of these ads surface after last year’s super bowl such as Saturn’s Total Confidence Ads. News stories point to a nearing [...]
Strathmore Paper Redesign
Strathmore Paper has just undergone a brand refresh by Pentagram and illustrator Marian Bantjes. Their task was to reinterpret Strathmore’s “thistle” symbol and apply it across all of their materials. Marian Bantjes, known for her highly-detailed calligraphic illustration style, applied her design to a pattern that appears all over Strathmore’s new paper reams. Elegant and striking [...]
Pentagram: Marks
Marks is Pentagram’s latest book, and is meant to be a companion to their Black Book, which was only released to Pentagram’s friends and clients. Marks features 400 logos Pentagram has designed over the years, dating back to 1962. If this is anything like the Black Book (which we were fortunate enough to win in a contest), [...]
Tropicana 100% Generic
This morning on NPR, I heard a story that today Tropicana is expected to announce that they are discontinuing their redesigned packaging introduced in early January. Over the past few weeks, they have received several complaints that the new “squeeze” campaign makes the product indistinguishable from generic store brands. Many people complained they were unable [...]
Paula Scher: Serious Play
Paula Scher of Pentagram is one of the Industry’s most respected designers, and has been designing innovative identities, packaging, publications, and environmental graphics for over three decades. She has worked for everyone under the sun, including countless high-profile companies and organizations, CBS records, and non-profits. Recently, she spoke at the Maryland Institute College of Art [...]
“Take you riding in the car”
When you think of the Audi brand you most likely associate it with sleek lines, sharp reflections and high contrast photography. Well, try this for a change: I ran across this ad on abduzeedo and wanted to share. It is a great ad that brings a more personal and light-hearted touch to the clean brand. [...]
A Warning For Tough Economic Times
I found this today and had to share: It’s so true – so much of our capitalistic society is built upon perception. If people perceive that the market is bad, they will do things that perpetuate just that, like take all of their money out of the stock market. The same applies to companies. Similarly, [...]
A Gutsy Brand Identity
I came across a bank Web site that I found to be pretty amazing. Not so much because the Web site did anything innovative, but because the brand identity did something I’ve never seen before in a bank: Used virtually no color. Check this out: I applaud First Direct for taking a bold approach with [...]
What A Difference A Brand Makes
There’s no question that a strong brand identity is crucial to building a brand in the mind of the consumer. This is something that we always stress with both clients and prospects of our firm. It’s a topic that I never mind discussing at length as anyone that reads this blog often can attest. However, [...]
2012 London Olympics Identity
The new identity for the 2012 Olympic Games to be held in London, England has been released and I’ve posted it above. Unfortunately for the IOC, the $800,000 logo has not been met with much acclaim since its reveal. In fact, as ABC News reports, the criticism has been downright rabid. Here’s an excerpt from [...]
Your Thoughts On Giant Food’s New Logo?
Giant Food, a local grocer with stores in Maryland, DC, Virginia and Delaware, has recently undergone a long overdue brand identity refresh. Their old identity had become stale and quite dated – not nearly as impressive as some of their closest competitors, many of which had recently undergone brand redevelopments of their own: Here’s what [...]
The Olympics are Green!!
To continue our topic of the Olympics I ran across an article that explains Beijing’s pledge to use Renewable Energy for the Olympics. The article points out how they are using wind power for 20% of the electricity supply for the events, solar power to light 80 to 90% of the street lamps, biogas to [...]
Branding That Doesn’t Live Up To Brand Experience
As brand marketers, we always seek to find businesses and organizations that have solid business models and a true unique quality that makes them better than the competition – and allows them to deliver a great brand experience. This makes our job much, much easier because we believe that a brand cannot survive on great [...]
Sunk Costs :: Let It Go…
I just read a great post from a blog I often read called Thought Gadgets and the author, Ben Kunz, was talking about a concept called “sunk costs.” He goes on to explain that this is an economic term that refers to past expenses or decisions that can never be recovered. The common logic of [...]
Love That Chicken
Working with a company that redefines and refocuses brands, I have come to love before and afters. I love the idea of taking something old and stale and making something appealing and desirable out of it. I think that’s exactly what the folks at Pentagram just did with the Popeyes brand. Until recently the brand [...]
New Work :: Fastspot Identity
I’m really proud to show you all some of our latest work. Our team at Orange Element recently helped the great folks at interactive design firm Fastspot redevelop their brand identity to help them better communicate to their target audiences what defines them as a firm. We’ve known Fastspot for years and are well versed [...]
Robochairs
Our new intern, Kaley Hymiller started at Orange Element today. She is tops in my book already because she sent me a sweet link to blog about. As you know from reading my earlier post about Kaley, she’s way into industrial design. That’s why she loved this Gizmodo story about RFID-driven library chairs. It doesn’t [...]
The Obama vs. McCain Online Debate
Now that the primary race has (finally) settled down and we have ourselves a consensus on the Democratic and Republican nominees for President, it’s time to start the analysis of each candidate’s marketing efforts. Since this subject matter has likely been covered eleven bazillion times already, I promise to keep my thoughts succinct and relatively [...]
