What have these pictures in common?

It’s over fifty years old, it’s the most widely used font ever, and it has recently become the subject of its own movie.

We’re talking about the world’s most recognizable font: Helvetica. Its relevance in design through the years and even today seems unbeatable. This 50-year-old typeface contributes to the branding success of many major tech, auto, and airline companies. 

Love it or hate it, with its multitude of styles and versions, Helvetica is here to stay and its use in logos throughout the world remains as strong as ever:

What did Helvetica tell you today ?

We recently discovered an interesting ‘leaked’ work-in-progress-document from the design company who made the new Pepsi Identity. It’s a ‘Breathtaking Design Strategy’ PDF (dated 2008.08.04), which contains 27 pages revealing the research to support Pepsi’s new logo: universal design principles, creation of Identity, geometry, proportions, color theory, dynamics,…

Their “BREATHTAKING-strategy is based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy” ! 

You can see the PDF here: Breathtaking Design Strategy

Or download the complete PDF here: Breathtaking Design Strategy PDF

These tourism brands are from countries from all over the world. Many of these countries with a variety of destinations or rich cultural or geographic assets can’t easily be depicted through one specific icon or symbol. 

In our tiny little country we have a typical ‘Belgian solution’: we have 3 tourism-logo’s, one for each region!!! (Vlaanderen - Wallonie+Bruxelles - Oostkantons)

www.visitflanders.com      www.belgie-toerisme.be      www.eastbelgium.com

From 14 till March 22 Vierkantemeter is using their brand new logo for the first time at the event SFEER09 in Flanders Expo Gent. Today designed the logo, stationery and folder.

www.vierkantemeter.be

www.sfeer.be

Each year, The ‘Week of the Flavour’ has a host City, Town or Region of the Flavour, organising an abundance of activities during the ‘Week of the Flavour’, The last day of that ‘Week of the Flavour’, the City, Town or Region in question will host everyone from the Flanders region during their grand closing festival.

In 2009, the city of Leuven is the ‘City of the Flavour’. Leuven takes over the torch from Lier. The latter carried this title with great honour in 2008. In 2007, the city of Kortrijk was bestowed with the title, and in 2006 Hasselt was nominated as the first ever ‘City of the Flavour’.

Brand design bureau Today, housed in Leuven, designed the new logo for ‘Leuven, City of the Flavour 2009’ / ‘Leuven, Stad van de Smaak 2009’.

www.weekvandesmaak.be

André Citroën (1878-1935) is the name of an engineer that started an car manufacturing plant at the beginning of the twentieth century in France. in Poland in 1900, he acquires a Russian patent for the production of gears with a V-shaped tread (arrow joggled). This peculiar shape is reflected in the ‘double chevron’ of the Citroën logo.

Celebrating it’s 90^th birthday, Citroën developed a new brand style, in which the current design of the double chevron (in a red square) will make room for a metallic 3D design, following the trend adopted by other car manufacturers most recently.

The new logo can already be seen on the GT Concept. The first production car rolling out of the plants will be the C3 Picasso.

Below website has more on the new identity of Citroën:

www.creativetechnologie.com

The French Government, as part of it strategy to rejuvenate its tourism industry, has created a new France brand that includes a new logo and tagline. The objective was to establish a strong, united visual identity that can be used throughout the industry and to standardize the image of France worldwide. Advisors to the plan wanted a logo that is striking, witty and generous to express three traits that make France unique:

liberty: independence, creativity, imagination, boldness, spontaneity, a multitude of possibilities
authenticity: history, heritage, culture, nature
sensuality: pleasure, epicureanism, romance, intensity, passion, femininity

The design is a fluid feminine figure that is modern, sensual, timeless and forward-looking. The tagline “Rendez-vous en France” is an integral part of the logo. It is a universal term often associated with a romantic rendez-vous that is an attractive concept for all cultures. 

We prefere one of the previous designs for the new logo: see image below…

After designing the monogram, Today also created the new logo for Antiques&Objects, in which the stylish word logo was positioned centrally under the monogram. The new visual style is now also applied on the business cards and will soon be adopted on the A&O website.

More information and examples can be found in cases.

For Antiques&Objects, Today designed a monogram in which the letters A&O are centralized and surrounded by ‘antiquated’ elements and ornaments. The next steps in the rebranding of Antiques&Objects will be: design of a new logo, a graphical style, photography style, an a new look and feel for the website.

More information and examples can be found in our cases.

Peps Recentlyi redesigned its globe logo. A ’smile’ will characterise brand Pepsi, while a ‘grin’ is used for Diet Pepsi and a ‘laugh’ is used for Pepsi Max.

The video below shows the evolution of the Pepsi brand…

…and also shows the different curves of the new Pepsi symbols/globes (Pepsi Regular/Diet/Max).

Watch the Pepsi logo evolution.