Brand New Conference is a two-day event hosted by UnderConsideration (co-founders Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit), with the main theme corporate and brand identity.

This will be the conference’s eighth year. Past Brand New conferences have been held in Nashville, New York, and San Francisco.

Lee has been a keen supporter of the Brand New blog since it began over ten years ago, and is happy to attend this conference to connect with this vibrant and engaged community. He will be in Chicago from Wednesday, September 13 and for the duration of the conference.

Connect with Lee to talk digital transformation and system strategy during networking time at the conference, or reach out to him on either of his social media platforms to organize a chat!

This will be the conference’s eighth year. Past Brand New conferences have been held in Nashville, New York, and San Francisco.

Lee has been a keen supporter of the Brand New blog since it began over ten years ago, and is happy to attend this conference to connect with this vibrant and engaged community. He will be in Chicago from Wednesday, September 13 and for the duration of the conference.

Connect with Lee to talk digital transformation and system strategy during networking time at the conference, or reach out to him on either of his social media platforms to organize a chat!

The post We’re Chicago-bound for the Brand New Conference. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Following the launch of the University of California identity, it seems a petition was sent around calling for the new logo to be kiboshed, with a return to the original UC seal. Well, 50,000+ voices have been heard.

From the announcement by UC Senior VP for External Relations, Daniel M Dooley:

The monogram was only a piece of the visual identity system — a new approach to typography, photography, colors and the like — that was developed by UCOP design staff.

Since it debuted in the past year, this new “look” has served the UC system well, replacing what was a clutter of dated materials that varied from UCOP department to department. And it has received praise from an array of accomplished design experts not affiliated with the university.

And yet, while I believe the design element in question would win wide acceptance over time, it also is important that we listen to and respect what has been a significant negative response by students, alumni and other members of our community.

Therefore, I have instructed the communications team to suspend further use of the monogram.

Armin at Brand New offers this perspective:

Happy now? By next week you’ll have forgotten about even signing the petition but, in the course of that, you have caused irremediable damage in the confidence of the leadership team at UC to even consider doing anything new or different anytime soon that would potentially help improve your university system to succeed. Enjoy your seal.

And boy is Armin getting an earful in the comments. No one there supporting the new monogram, of course, but they are taking Armin to task for not appreciating the public and alumni discourse that led to this decision.

I just wish they’d gone exclusively with this, which seems to also have been part of their plans:

Instead of this:

Which makes us all think this:

In the end, why all the variation? Seal vs monogram vs monogram with text vs monogram with the gradient fadeout. There’s no surprise things turned out this way when no one was willing to be decisive about how the monogram was to be applied.

The post University of California identity fallout. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

But you’re still left with the final logo, which starts, reasonably enough here:

But somehow ends up here:

This comment thread on Vimeo spells it out clear enough:

Tina: Does that logo really make you think, higher education?
Morgan: It makes me think the logo isn’t done loading.

And, as Gruber says:

It has no heft, no gravitas.

Shame, for all the well-put effort that otherwise went into building out a coherent identity for the university.

References
Brand New: IC, UC, We all C for California
Daring Fireball: UC Introduces New Logo
Mercury News: UC Introduces a Modern Logo

The post University of California identity appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Designers in Canada owe a debt to Burton Kramer. As Roger Remington states in the introduction of Burton Kramer, Identities:

Kramer became known as a staunch advocate of fully integrated design at a time when such an approach was virtually unknown in Canada.

Bringing this Swiss design ethos to Canada in the mid-60s was quite a revelation and, with Expo 67, gave Kramer and designers such as Moshe Safdie an opportunity to shine as the world visited Montreal.

Canadians of this era will remember Kramer’s work for Clairtone, a high-end Toronto based audio brand founded by Peter Munk (who’s foundation launched the remarkable Munk Debates).

Still in the mid-60s, Kramer was working with the Royal Ontario Museum to help define a consistent visual language across the variety of exhibitions.

And Canadians of all ages will recognize his work for CBC, CIBC, the Eaton Centre and Union Station.

Interior designers will appreciate his work for Teknion.

While Torontonian drivers may bristle slightly at the green P which doubtless reminds us of a few meter maid run-ins.

Though Burton Kramer, Identities, doesn’t share much in the way of the process behind much of the work, there’s just so much to see here from a remarkable and culturally significant career.

You can find more info and order details at burtonkrameridentities.com.

The post Burton Kramer, Identities, chronicles an icon of Canadian design appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Ottawa based designer Steve Zelle contributed a great article to LogoDesignLove last week titled: Logo warehouses, crowdsourcing, and a lack of understanding. He begins with:

Logo design should not be approached with the goal of filling that blank spot on the top of your letterhead. It is not the time to recklessly do something trendy and cool. Most importantly, it is not about getting a task off your to-do list so you can move on to selling widgets to your customers.

The logo design process should provide value far beyond the delivery of a symbol.

The trouble with looking for a low or no cost, easy and quick logo isn’t that you get designers barking at you about spec work or that your fans jump down your throat (I’m loathe to reference the Gap again, but the reality is they saw both of these reactions by being lazy with their logo development). No, the issue is this attitude leads to you, your designers, and your customers neglecting your brand and, by extension, your company.

Let’s jump back to Steve’s article, as he expresses this point visually:

When you cheap out on process, you yourself spend less time on research and planning, your design team spends less time getting to know you, your product, your needs, and what drives your consumer, and this neglect inevitably leads to consumer disinterest because the end result is not as suited to you as it should be. None of which is healthy for your company, short term, long term or otherwise.

Steve continues:

While a graphic designer can help with the nurturing, a logo alone is not the solution to developing a strong brand. This strength can only come from understanding. The company must understand their business, competition, market space, preferences, trends, strengths, weaknesses, and most importantly why customers should care about them.

Understanding goes the other way, too. If their customers can’t understand what it is that makes the company unique and why they should care, then they cannot develop a connection. No connection, no strength.

One of the greatest values a graphic designer can provide is the ability to successfully translate this understanding into a visual brand.

Here’s the full article. A great read!

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We needed more colour to fill in the site. Simplicity to increase recognition. And a little boldness to help the identity man up a little and hopefully provide for some great swag in the future. Here’s where we ended up:

The post Date Ideas identity refresh. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

We’ve previously talked about the b5media Ad Sales Brochure. What we want to share now is the companion slide deck. We have a lot of fun building slide decks because we’re focused solely on supporting the speaker. This means we want to create a healthy backdrop for them to shine against and help guide the conversation that they’ll be engaging in with their listeners.

We’ve all seen slide decks where you’ve got an abundance of illegible bullet points or tiny little charts. None of this helps the audience or the speaker relate their story effectively. It generally distracts from the conversation with the speaker pointing to things that no one can read and the audience focusing on the slide instead of the story. Engagement fail.

When we create a slide deck, we urge clarity. For b5media, they needed to be able to dive into the content shown in their brochure and even expand on this. Rather than pushing all of the info they’d be talking about onto the deck, we used the same theme of brochure, with alternating category colours depending on the topic of the conversation, and subtle informational bullets that would animate on screen during the conversation.

Take a look by clicking through the slide deck below. You’ll see the presenter controls sectional transitions, while some areas, like categories, will run automatically while the presenter is talking.

Check out some of our other slide decks at Slideshare.net

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For years Americans have enjoyed the advantages of person to person lending and borrowing, but due to strict regulations here in Canada, loans could only be issued by accredited lenders like banks and credit card companies. Working closely with regulators, CommunityLend will soon be offering Canadian lenders and borrowers alike the opportunity to play in the once tightly-closed $100 Billion industry.

With a bright idea in place, and even brighter future, CommunityLend came to us looking for help introducing online person to person lending to the Canadian public. We designed and wrote the CommunityLend site to gradually walk potential borrowers and lenders through this new process, clearly defining what person to person lending is and its benefits to consumers.

While we can’t yet show you the full scope of our marketing, design and application development work for CommunityLend, we encourage you to take a look at the first phase of development which is viewable at CommunityLend. This includes the new design standards and visual language, launched April 2008.

What we’ve worked on:

• Strategic Development from the Brand out.
• Communications concept and marketing web site.
• Application interface design.
• Community site design.

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stickstickbangbang.com hasn’t quite launched yet, but we’re super excited about this vinyl paradise, where you can create skins for any number of electronic devices you have, from music players to laptops.
Stick Stick Bang Bang is all about personalization. And what better way to express this than by having an interactive logo. You can play like we play and layer it up to match their identity, or you can Stick Stick and Bang Bang your way around with the stickers that come with each skin you order.

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