Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The logo suggests the natural rich landscapes of Rio de Janeiro, with a yellow sun rising behind the green hills and valleys of Rio (highlighting the Sugar Loaf (Portuguese: Pão de Açucar), the city’s best known icon), and blue sea. Overall, the logo has a heart shape which represents the Brazilian’s passion and enthusiasm for sports. Through its repetition, a stylized clover is formed, associated with the luck for everyone seeking to surpass limits, without any artifices other than the strength and heartiness of the person who brings along his people’s dreams. The logo was designed by Ana Soter.  With the slogan, “Live your passion,” an exclamation mark is incorporated into the number “1″ to suggest the expectation and excitement for the opportunity to host. Designed by Ana Soter and selected by a special jury, the logo uses a stylized Sugarloaf Mountain in the shape of a heart to represent Brazil’s passion and enthusiasm for sports.

Tokyo, Japan
The Tokyo 2016 logo takes the form of a traditional Japanese knot known as “MUSUBI”, has long been utilized in Japan to signify blessings during times of celebration. It integrates the five Olympic colours into a motif of colourful and decorative knotted strings which have long been utilised in Japan to signify blessings during times of celebration. Using the slogan “Uniting our worlds,” the logo ties the five Olympic colors in the form of a traditional Japanese knot.  Tokyo’s logo was created by acclaimed designer Kenji Ekuan of GK Design Group .

Chicago, USA
Designed by VSA Partners, this is Chicago’s second logo for its 2016 bid. The first (which featured an olympic torch with flames resembling Chicago’s skyline) violated Olympic rules which prohibit the use of the Olympic symbol, motto, flag, flame, torch, or medal. With the slogan “Let friendship shine,” the new logo uses a six-pointed Chicago star representing a compass pointing out in all directions of the world.

Tim Hortons was founded and named after a famous hockey player in 1964, Tim Hortons’ trademark Timbits and Ice Capps are ingrained in the country’s culture. With around 3,000 locations, Tim Hortons is the largest food service operator in Canada, even larger than McDonald’s and Starbucks, selling about two billion cups of coffee per year. But to most Americans, Tim Hortons means nothing. “The biggest challenge will be to get New Yorkers to know what Tim Hortons is,” the Riese Organization (the local franchisee) told the New York Times.

The new Tim Hortons locations popped up in previous Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants, also franchised by the Riese Organization. The switchover came after a legal battle between Riese and Dunkin’ Donuts which started in 1999 when The New York Post published a photo of mice eating doughnuts at one of its locations. The restaurants were quickly converted over a single weekend, opening up in hot spots such as Times Square and Madison Square Garden the following Monday. For Tim’s sake, hopefully they had enough time to rid the place of mice.

Along with coffee and doughnuts, Tim Hortons also serves breakfast, soups and sandwiches—nothing new to New York which has hundreds of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, and thousands of other coffee and food spots. But the company hopes customers will see a difference, “New Yorkers are savvy customers, they understand good value and quality, and are prepared to try new things,” said COO David Clanachan. The franchise already has plans to open more New York stores this summer.

Tim Hortons representatives did not respond on whether this new branding will spread to its other stores (nationally or internationally), or even its cups and packaging which currently use the old oval logo. Although, the company has never really worried too much about consistency, with many Canadian stores still sporting this logo from the mid-nineties.

With over 500 locations now in the United States, the New York stores are not the first, but it does mark a new push to get the brand noticed in the U.S. market. “Coming to New York City is a significant milestone in our U.S. expansion,” said president and CEO Don Schroeder. With this push comes a new logo which adds the “Coffee & Bake Shop” tagline to help explain what the chain has to offer. The redesigned logo, spotted so far only on the New York signs and advertising, seems to lose its ‘wholesome, homemade’ appeal for a more retro vibe (reminiscent of Krispy Kreme), an obvious attempt to look ‘hip’ enough to replace Dunkin.

Tim Hortons representatives did not respond on whether this new branding will spread to its other stores (nationally or internationally), or even its cups and packaging which currently use the old oval logo. Although, the company has never really worried too much about consistency, with many Canadian stores still sporting this logo from the mid-nineties.

updated 6:00 p.m. ET July 8, 2009

DETROIT – General Motors could literally turn green as it readies itself for major management and cultural changes that will coincide with its escape from bankruptcy protection.

People briefed on its plans say the company is looking into changing the background color of its corporate logo from blue to green in an effort to show consumers that it is leaner and greener, more focused on fuel efficiency and better able to make quick decisions.

Ed Welburn, GM’s vice president of design, is leading a group that is studying name and logo changes, but no recommendation has been made, according to one of the people. Changing the background of the familiar square blue-and-white GM logo has been discussed, said the people, who requested anonymity because no decision has been reached.

What has been decided, though, is the need for management and cultural changes. New CEO Fritz Henderson is preparing to cut another 4,000 white-collar jobs, including 450 executive-level employees such as plant managers or engineering group heads.

Henderson, under pressure from the new GM’s largest shareholder, the U.S. government, wants a more nimble company, one that can make decisions faster and is less bureaucratic than the GM of the past.

In the old GM, several committees often reviewed decisions, holding up new vehicles and making it slow to respond to market changes. Designs were often changed from bold to bland, with GM stamping out nondescript cars such as the old Chevrolet Malibu. With taxpayer dollars and its very existence on the line, GM can no longer afford to take too long.

So Henderson will thin executive ranks by 35 percent, from about 1,300 to 850 by the end of the year. Total U.S. salaried employment will drop by 6,150, or 21 percent, from 29,650 at the start of the year to 23,500 by the end.

The changes could be announced as soon as Friday after the courts clear the sale of GM’s good assets to a new company largely owned by the U.S. and Canadian governments and the United Auto Workers union. They will flatten the automaker’s organizational chart, eliminating work groups and shrinking the organization to match a smaller footprint, according to the people briefed on the plan.

The flatter organization will make it easier for Henderson to hold people accountable for their work, while focusing more on product development and customer service, one of the people said.

The new structure would be similar to one imposed on Chrysler Group LLC by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, who now controls the company. Marchionne shed layers of management.

General Motors Corp. also could announce a subcompact car to be built at a Michigan factory, widely believed to be the four-seat Chevrolet Spark minicar now being sold in China.

GM for years had neglected its small cars, unable to make money on them because of high labor costs. Instead, it focused more on high-profit trucks and sport utility vehicles. Its current entries, such as the Korean-made Chevrolet Aveo subcompact and the U.S.-made Chevrolet Cobalt compact, have not sold as well as top-selling entries from Toyota and Honda.

The new GM, however, is betting that car buyers will shift to small as gas prices swing wildly, and it’s trying to upgrade that class of vehicle. The company says lower labor costs and higher sales prices should yield more profits.

GM is also trying to go leaner by selling off its European Adam Opel GmbH unit, as well as Sweden’s Saab, and the Hummer and Saturn brands. Pontiac is to be discontinued by the end of the year, leaving GM with only four brands — Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC.

Steve Rattner, the head of the Obama administration’s auto task force, told reporters earlier this week that GM must adjust to being smaller and less global.

“It would be natural as part of this overall downsizing of GM for there to be a change in the management structure to become a bit closer to the ground, a bit leaner and meaner,” he said Monday.

The U.S. government is expected to provide about $50 billion in aid to the automaker as it exits bankruptcy and tries to become profitable even in a depressed world auto sales market. That won’t be easy for a company that has lost more than $80 billion in the past four years.

Source from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31805852/ns/business-autos/

The redesign (Newsweek’s second since 2007) focuses on making things simpler, a nice change to the previous format. The new look makes use of some much needed whitespace as well as some fresh new typography. One of the biggest improvements is the paper itself, going from the extremely thin (almost transparent) off-white, to a more substantial stock.

Perhaps more notably, the redesign goes beyond the visual:

...the new Newsweek will no longer attempt to re-report and annotate the week’s events — an expensive, unsustainable approach to making a weekly news magazine. The magazine will not scramble the jets and deploy huge resources to cover a breaking story unless, as Mr. Meacham put it, the magazine is ‘truly adding to the conversation.’ Instead, the reimagined magazine will include reported narratives that rely on intellectual scoops rather than informational ones and pair them with essayistic argument.

-David Carr, New York Times

Before:

After:

Source from: http://www.idsgn.org/posts/newsweek-can-a-redesign-save-a-dying-magazine/

MTV launches a spanky new look as of today – as its international brand refresh rolls out across the company’s network of 64 channels, created by MTV’s creative directors from around the world in collaboration with UK-based studio Universal Everything…

We use the word refresh rather than rebrand as the MTV logo is still recognisable – the new logo (above) is, in fact, the old logo – but in MTV’s new look, the logo remains black on a white ground – no colour, pattern or texture will ever adorn it – which is a change from MTV of old where the idents were based on the logo being played around with.

“Now the logo is sacred,” says Roberto Bagatti, Vice President of Creative for MTV Networks International and Creative Director of MTV’s World Design Studio in Milan, who oversaw the project.

So if the logo’s the same, what’s new? MTV Networks International now has a new flexible typographic navigation system for displaying onscreen information. The MTV logo remains in a fixed top left position onscreen at all times and acts as an anchor for the new system of information display – with the title of the current programme always appearing immediately to the right of the logo in a blue progress-bar so viewers can guage where they are in the current programme. To the right of this info is where viewers will occasionally see information in yellow text boxes: yellow denotes what’s coming up next on the channel. And to the right of this, appears what’s coming up later – always in a pink info box. The typeface used for this primary information is Pharma Bold Condensed by Swiss type foundry Optimo.

As well as the main programme info, more playful messages will appear in the lower third of the screen – and for this text, there is a collection of secondary brand typefaces to choose from, depending on the mood of the message. The eight secondary typefaces were selected for their expressive or emotion-inducing nature – and to add an element of fun to the onscreen identity of the channel.

The faces, shown above, are American Typewriter Light Italic, Balloon Bold, Bigcity Maxi, Cozzap Open, Flash ND, Futura SB Bold Italic, Sahara Bodoni and Signpainter House Brush. Here’s an example of how these will be used onscreen.

The first six new channel idents make it clear beyond doubt that MTV is sporting a slick new look – based on an idea of “pop x 1000%” which was, says Bagatti, “the rebrand project’s title and mantra.”

Regular CR blog readers may recall us writing about Universal Everything’s Advanced Beauty project in which UE’s Matt Pyke collaborated with his sound designer brother, Simon (Freeform), as well as a host of hand-picked film makers to create motion graphics pieces or “sound sculptures”. Well, the new MTV idents look and feel like an extension of this project – perhaps unsurprisingly as they’ve been created similarly – with Matt Pyke commissioning films from filmmakers he admires with his brother Simon working on the soundtrack for each ident. However, each of the MTV idents has exactly the same 2/2 time signature – a heartbeat-like rhythm to which the MTV logo always pulsates. Here are all six of the new idents so you can see how they look:

“We are huge fans of Universal Everything, says Bagatti of MTV’s choice of agency. They apply a fresh direction to each new project that goes beyond momentary trends in graphic design and they approach a brief with a different kind of attitude and a wide range of references spread across multiple disciplines – everything from architecture and contemporary art, to molecular cuisine and biology. We were also drawn towards the non-traditional broadcast side that Universal Everything applies. We knew that their interpretation of pop culture would fit with ours and visually, the rebrand would be spectacular without treading on clichés.”

MTV International / Mad Drummer from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

MTV International / Sweetheart from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

MTV International / Mister Furry from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

Source from: http://www.creativereview.co.uk

The slightly refreshed identity was designed by Anthony Piraino from the Iconfactory, directed by the logo’s original designer along with the team at Mozilla. As described in the extensive creative brief, the goal was to modernize the overall look of the logo.

You have to look close, but the most notable differences include finer hair detail and depth shading on the fox, flames that wrap around the globe, and a few heavy coats of gloss on the globe itself. I don’t know if it really looks more modern, but it is definitely more detailed. Which is not necessarily a good thing for an identity—a lot of the charm of the original logo was in its iconic stylization. But truth be told, it looks pretty much the same.

The original Firefox logo was designed by Jon Hicks in 2004, based on a concept from Daniel Burka and sketched by Stephen Desroches (discussed here). Daniel Burka’s concept was partially inspired by a piece of artwork found in his childhood bible (pictured above), before going though its many iterations:

Source from: http://www.idsgn.org/

Old MySpace Logo

New MySpace Logo- no more motto

The PR of MySpace refused to confirm that the logo is new, or say why they changed it. It sure is absurd to have a conversation that goes something like “So it looks like you’ve changed your logo this evening? No Comment. Uh huh. Ok, so any official reason why you changed it? No comment.” Trade secrets, I guess. And heck, I’m just happy someone still works there to pick up the phone.

MySpace is also on the warpath to get more users. At login they now strongly suggest you log into your email and invite friends (hopefully they’ll avoid turning this too spammy). And they’ve also added the “people you may know” feature as a widget to all logged in profile pages.

MySpace will be removing some of the ugliest ad units that adorn the site.

Information from: TechCrunch

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MySpace, which launched in January of 2004, is one of the world’s leading social portals. MySpace empowers its global community to experience the Internet through a social lens by integrating personal profiles, photo sharing, professional and viral… Learn More

Mozilla recently released version 3.5 of its browser, Firefox, and it contained one tiny feature that could be a huge boon for web design: The ability to display any font, thanks to “@font-face,” which allows designers to store fonts on their own servers, and reference them on their web pages. Designers Ian Lynam and Craig Mod have just posted a primer on the new feature, which shows just how much is possible. (A screencap of the primer is pictured above.)

If you have Firefox 3.0 but not 3.5, update now to see how dramatic the page looks, before and after. Previously, web designers who couldn’t bear the thought of compromising on their type have relied on Flash or Javascript–which are, of course, clunky and annoying. @font-face is miles more elegant.

Safari has offered @font-face linking ever since version 3.1; Opera, meanwhile, has announced that the protocol will be supported in its next version. Internet Explorer, of course, is waaaaaay behind.

If you’re interested in a longer, more detailed discussion of @font-face, check out this post on Mozilla Hacks.

Information from: FastCompany

Jamie Oliver’s condiment line, designed by Pearlfisher, won Gold.

Another Gold: Gut Oggau Wine, designed by Jung von Matt.

Raison Pure also won Gold, for their work on “Flowerbomb Safe,” a fragrance by Victor & Rolf. The design manages to suit Victor & Rolf’s overriding brand aesthetic perfectly–fancy but dangerous:

There are some more award winning design on FastCompany.com

The before and after Oreo packages:

Both Ritz and Oreo are sporting a simple new logo (4 letters placed inside circles), echoing the round shape of the product. The Ritz package seems to build on the design sensibility of the acclaimed (and unexpected) ‘Open for Fun’ campaign seen last year from advertising agency EuroRSCG:

Source from: http://www.idsgn.org/posts/ritz-and-oreo-go-retro/