Brilliant work from Italian designer and illustrator Francesco Muzzi.
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Thanks to this week's Sponsor // RetroSupply Co.: A library of vintage inspired design resources for Photoshop and Illustrator.Launched this past September at an event in the United Nations (UN) headquarters, HeForShe is the "UN Women's Solidarity Movement for Gender Equality bringing together one half of humanity in support of the other half of humanity, for the benefit of all." The movement and campaign hinge on the premise that gender equality is not just a women's issue but a human rights issue that requires participation from both women and men. The HeForShe campaign was brought to the forefront thanks to a heartfelt speech from Emma Watson that clearly emphasized the need for both genders to work together. The logo and identity for the movement has been designed by New York, NY-based DIA.
The HeForShe logo mark represents this solidarity movement by joining together aspects of both the female and male symbols. This union symbolizes women and men working together to make gender equality a reality. This mark does not favor the male or female symbol, but blends them together creating a new symbol for humanity and gender equality.
The icon picks up pieces from the male and female gender symbols to form a new icon making it identifiable with the cause but without being overly prescriptive or literal about it. The implied cross formed by the two shapes also gives it a sense of urgency and of something that needs to be fixed. At times I want to read the black shape as an "L" and I wish there was a better integration between the two contrasting shapes, as opposed to just one on top of the other, in order to convey the need for unity a little better. It's hard to predict yet whether this icon will rise to the prominence of other cause icons — whether it's the AIDS ribbon or even the peace symbol originally meant to represent a weapons disarmament movement — but it clearly has the potential in its simplicity.
The wordmark is fantastically ambiguous and it really manages to capture a neutrality that makes it neither masculine nor feminine, yet it's really both. And the color palette is both stark and vibrant… I could see both me or my wife wearing the exact same HeForShe t-shirt in this color palette with equal comfort and conviction.
Overall, the identity communicates with shared masculine and feminine sensibilities. The typography is bold, but thoughtful while the colors are powerful, warm and energetic.
In application, the two colors — three with white — work so well together and provide an infinite range of combinations where each color can become dominant or complementary and still stay on brand, while the icon can become the center of attention, literally, or serve as a signature, or take over as a pattern. It's enjoyably flexible — and gender equal! Overall, this is a solid and thoughtful launch that really serves the message.
(Est. 1993) "People remember things that surprise them. Things they don't expect--an agency with a name that sounds like a rare tropical fungal infection for example. WONGDOODY was founded in 1993, and since then we've proved that the unexpected can do some remarkable things. Whether in Seattle or Los Angeles, our 150 employees regularly use this approach to push client boundaries, disrupt convention, shatter expectations, start conversations, collect eyeballs and move consumers. And in the process, we've become the most awarded independent advertising agency on the West Coast."
Design by: In-house (led by Pam Fujimoto, Executive Creative Director in Los Angeles)
Opinion/Notes: The old Yin-yang-meets-St.-Patrick's-Day logo did not help at all the cause of the easily mockable name of WONGDOODY (named after founders Tracy Wong and Pat Doody). Clumsy and weird, it just wasn't very creative or appealing. The new logo is 100% energy and adrenaline rush with the italicized, neon-infused wordmark that literally screams WONGDOODY! It's almost like too-easy a solution, but the letters in the name work perfectly in the condensed sans serif and the subtle color variations break up the long name nicely. The business cards with the mangled names in the back is quite funny too and lets clients know that the firm is not above laughing at themselves.
Related Links: N/A
Select Quote: The original black and green color palette has been amped up with an array of neon shades that capture Wongdoody's energy, boldness and enthusiasm, and a simple design keeps the memorable name as the hero. The new look is a big departure from the original. "When we launched, we deliberately designed our identity to look safe. Who on earth would hire an unknown agency with a wacky name like Wongdoody? So why make it worse with a crazy logo?" explained Tracy Wong, Chairman and Co-Founder of Wongdoody. "However over the years we became known for our unexpected creative, and that initial conservative identity was at odds with our work. This was a chance for our branding to sync up with what we do." Wongdoody has seen memorable hack-jobs of its name ever since the agency’s inception. These frequently botched names appear throughout the new identity, in a graphical text treatment on the back of new business cards and across the website.
Conferences are a great way to stay ahead of the curve and The Future of Web Design (FOWD) by Future Insights is a conference that I highly recommend. I’ve personally been to 4 of their conferences since 2009 and they have consistently got better each year which is why I still volunteer to be one of their media partners.
Their conferences are energy-filled (see photos) and extremely inspiring, and are targeted towards web designers, front-end developers, and anyone working to make the web incredible. FOWD starts with a full day of workshops, followed by two days of sessions, networking activities, and creative challenges to nourish your brain.
I have a 2-day conference pass worth $999 to give away to Just Creative readers for the Future of Web Design 2014 in New York City on November 4 & 5.
To enter, simply leave a comment below stating why you want to attend FOWD and we will pick the best option and announce it here on the 10th of October.
Please take note that travel is not included so if you can not make it to New York on these dates, please do not enter. The ticket can not be resold.
Everyone’s a winner! You can get 10% off the 2-day ticket price by using the code ‘JUSTCREATIVE’ at checkout. Click here to learn more / buy tickets. See you there!
Exactly one week ago, after about eight months of hard work, my wife and I unleashed our new magazine into the world and I’m happy to say that — in case you missed the news — Lagom now is available to buy from readlagom.com and a growing list of stockists all over the world.
As you can see, it’s taken me a week to write this post. Partly because I’m still experiencing that post-release high that makes concentration hard; partly because we’re both coming down with some sort of flu now that we’ve ‘stopped’; partly because there’s just so much admin to deal with after a launch. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, though, and it feels great to have the mag out there — it’s such a thrill to see people posting photos of it online, and to see it literally sitting on shelves in bookshops. Here it is in Magma, in great company:
We’ve also been lucky enough to get some decent press coverage. Today we were interviewed on Creative Review’s blog, and there are more press appearances to come.
I’m immensely proud of Lagom. It’s the culmination of everything I’ve learned about publishing, print design, typography, logistics, and the entire editorial process from my previous print projects. It’s also the first project my wife and I have created together, and working with Sam has been an absolutely amazing experience. Her editorial direction is so much stronger than mine and it’s resulted in a magazine that is far more focussed and mature than any of my previous publishing attempts.
Lagom’s team — a total of 23 people, including us — have produced some incredible work. From articles to photos to illustrations, the pieces we got back were so good that we ended up giving each story more and more space to let the words and pictures breathe, until eventually the magazine literally doubled from our original estimate of 64 pages. Given the thick uncoated paper stock (140gsm for the interior and 300gsm for the cover), those 128 pages in a perfect-bound spine make for a veritable weapon!
For Lagom’s website, we opted for a Squarespace theme. Part of me feels like a cheat using a theme rather than designing (or commissioning) my own, but the reality is that Squarespace’s templates are so good, and my time was so occupied with the print work, that a bespoke website just didn’t make sense. Squarespace is so powerful, too: not only is the admin ridiculously easy to work with, but their commerce platform is robust.— far superior, even, to other platforms whose primary product is commerce. Crucially, it integrates with Stripe, the payment gateway we’ve been using for a while now with 8 Faces. It was literally just a case of connecting the two, which was so easy: pretty much like when you allow apps to access your Facebook or Twitter accounts.
I should add that, yes, Squarespace is one of our partners, but that’s not why we’re using them. It’s the other way around: we use (and pay for) their product because we love it and that’s why we asked them to be a partner. The same thing goes for MailChimp. Love those guys.
Anyway, I’ve probably waffled on enough for now. I’ll be writing more about Lagom in the near future; especially about the nerdy design details like its type system and grid system.
You can buy Lagom #1 — or a multi-issue subsciption — directly from readlagom.com, or from a growing number of physical shops. I hope you like it, and please do tweet photos to me if you get a copy!
Launched this past September by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, "Turkey: Discover the Potential" is a new business-, investment-, and export-oriented brand for the country providing support, credibility, and gravitas to products made in Turkey and exported to the world. The effort comes from the Turkish Exporters Assembly, an organization established in 1993 that represents over 60,000 active exporters. The identity for this new initiative has been designed by Saffron.
New brand introduction video. Music gets a little too ambitious. (Source video file here.)The resulting ability Turks have to accomodate foreign cultures and the need for flexibility in their products and services is highly differentiating. The visual solution is an expression of the many industries in which this brand idea is brought to life by Turkish companies. The slogan that Saffron developed, "Discover the potential" is the customer-facing translation of the brand idea. It invites potential investors to engage with Turkey and see for themselves what a difference Turkey can make to their business.
Given the nature of the recent Brand New Conference identity you would be right in your assumption that I am going to like this because I do. There is a great texture to the wordmark that makes it feel instantly Mediterranean but with a slight technological twist to it — it's easy to see some QR codes in those patterns. Some letters are more successful than others: the "T" and "u" are nearly perfect with a great balance of big and small patterns, while the "e" is all small patterns lacking contrast and the "k" not feeling quite resolved. But nitpicks aside, this is a very interesting take on patterns and their integration in a wordmark.
The big problem is scalability. Going large is no problem, going small is impossible. Well… it's possible but reproduced really small it starts to look like a Grunge typeface. Assuming some of these 60,000 exporters would want to add the logo to their product somehow, somewhere without sacrificing much real estate, this logo doesn't quite work so well, so perhaps there could be a shorthand version for using as a seal of approval.
These two applications, while they make sense, feel too clinical against the others and even the logo, which are successful because of the density of the patterns as opposed to the highlighting of individual tiles. I rarely do the "this-looks-like" critique but these posters and bag are very similar in concept and execution to the Bologna identity presented earlier this year. This is a more restrained and feasible approach than Bologna, but I dunno… a little too close.
The supporting sans serif doesn't quite convince me; I think a strong serif would have helped make this feel less like a start-up and more like a country with centuries of tradition and although the applications are all mostly mock-ups and prototypes you can see potential in the pattern and logo when used with the right print processes on the right materials. Perhaps the best compliment I could give is that this could easily work as Turkey's own country brand.
"Founded in 1923 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Amalgamated Bank is the largest union-owned bank and one of the only unionized banks in the United States. Amalgamated Bank is currently majority owned by Workers United, an SEIU Affiliate. As of June 30th, 2013, Amalgamated Bank has over $3.5 billion in assets and has never received a government bailout."
Design by: Pentagram (New York, NY; Michael Bierut, partner)
Opinion/Notes: The previous logo looked really mean and not very inviting to keep your money there and for retail locations it didn't have any curb appeal. The new color scheme alone — as New York Knicks and Mets as it gets — brings a healthy dash of cheerful color to the bank. The icon, serving as both an "AB" monogram or simply an attractive abstract shape gives the bank a more identifiable device that is intriguing and attractive in its weaved simplicity. The wordmark, set in Lineto's Circular, is okay and the way the "lg" and "k" interlock is beautiful; I'm not convinced an all-lowercase rendition of the name is the most appropriate for a bank and this bank in particular. Nonetheless, an undeniable improvement.
Related Links: Pentagram project page
Select Quote: The mark is weaved from two folded loops, suggesting strength and unity, good traits for a bank. (The definition of amalgamate is "combine or unite to form one organization or structure.") The shape functions both as a monogram — it updates an existing "AB" configuration — and a memorable symbol that graphically illustrates the bank’s emphasis on community and working together.
Logo detail. 
Stationery. 
Business card. 
Brochure cover. 
Sample editorial spreads. 
Scarf. 
Posters. 
United Nations special event ticket. 
Emma Watson delivering her speech on September 20, 2014. Watch the video 
Other guests at the event. 
Pins. 
Logo detail. 
Business cards with mangled names in the back. 
Logo detail, with tagline. 
Points of reference and some of the resulting patterns or tiles. 
Prototype posters. 
Prototype bag. 
Exhibit rendering. 
Debossed detail prototype. 
Logo detail on sexy, black paper. 
Logo detail. 
Retail signage samples. 
ATM. 
Credit cards. 
Forms. (My favorite application of all!).