Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Mr. Coffee by Blacktop Creative. The coffee maker company wanted to appeal to a younger consumer base, therefore they changed their logo

The logo I chose was Mr. Coffee because not only do I love coffee but I thought that the redesigned logo was interesting. Clearly, the before logo was geometric and representational. The typography is hard, straight and regular lines. You can tell it is man made and mathematically made to be perfectly proportionate. Inside the O are shapes that are symmetrical to each other, creating a flower shape.

The after logo is more organic. The typography is natural, more hand drawn with a more personalized feel to it. Although “EST. 1970” is geometric, Mr.Coffee overpowers it, giving the brand a more soft and complex look towards it. I personally prefer this logo because it is more inviting and personalized. Its imperfect yet simply creative.

For the images, the before logo is more mediated than after. It is more balanced, although there is nothing wrong with how after is spaced. They both have qualities that compliment the brand. Yet, another aspect to consider is that the after logo has more information within it. Instead of just saying the brand, it includes when it was founded. That can throw off its mediated space.

Overall, I would say that Mr. Coffee stuck to being more representational than abstract. Both logos are easy to read and have somewhat symmetry in each. Regardless, this company is successful and did not need to branch out to draw more customers in. I think the reason why they updated their logo was to become more personal and appealing to the coffee industry, whom is more indie and abstract in itself.

“A Lighter Light Beer” by Turner Duckworth. Turner Duckworth’s overall purpose of this new and improved Coors Light logo was to take it and give it a cleaner, simplified look and feel, all while still providing a playful and classic Coors Light design.

As a graphic designer, my motto is “make it simple yet significant.” For that reason I chose to analyze the remake of this Coors Light logo designed by Turner Duckworth.

When browsing through the “Brand New Blog” this piece of work stood out to me the most because of the amount of simplicity and significance that it held and quite frankly, I believe that if I were given the opportunity to redesign the Coors Light logo I would probably go for something similar to Turner Duckworth’s work.

I found the older logo to be more organic with a sense of still being somewhat geometric. The older logo tends to hold a lot more detail that can be seen in the design of the mountain, the outlining of the text, and the shadowing of the text. I felt that the mountain in the older logo gave off a slightly geometric feel because of the overall outline of the mountain but the amount of detail that it holds I believe gives it a more organic look.

The new logo is a more geometric representation of the older design. Specifically when looking at the simplicity in the shape of the mountain. You can see that Turner took the detail out of the mountain and gave it or a more 2 dimensional feel where as with the older logo the designer tried giving the mountain a more 3 dimensional feel. Looking at the new design, I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s abstract due to the fact that the mountain still looks like a mountain; it’s just more simplified.

The new design gives off a very modern feel. The mountain and text have been simplified but in a way where you still find the overall aesthetic of the logo appealing. All in all I can appreciate the work that Turner Duckworth put forth, I believe that he took simplicity, significance and modernization and created a great piece of art.

The new design was made to represent a “portal” to the web, as well as presumably to give the Opera web browser a more modern and human feel. Created in collaboration with Anti and DixonBaxi for Opera Software. Found on Brand New.

Although the Opera web browser isn’t as well known as its four larger competitors (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer), it still has a large user base located throughout the world – and like any other property on the internet, has to keep a simultaneously modern (if not subtly futuristic) and increasingly “human” look to it to stay relevant.

The new Opera logo does this well through using a largely geometric design that has a large amount of representation associated with it.

The logo – both new and old – is simply an ‘O’. For the old design, this was an entirely geometric design that was largely an abstract element, with little representative attributes. It was simply a letter. However, the new design manages to add some representative attributes in two ways: 1) its new drop shadow makes the design look less like a typographic letter, and more like a shape of some sort, and 2) its associated branding messages display the shape as a “portal”, with design elements running through the circle and being transformed in the process.

The designer(s) likely made these choices to bring Opera into a now-popular design and branding philosophy for technology companies – make everything seem more human. Technology has begun to be used more frequently by an ever-growing demographic, and the marketing of these companies has increasingly tapped into this potential for new users/buyers/etc. Getting more people interested in Opera and making Opera seem like a “welcoming” browser and brand were likely two important goals of the design – both of which I would say were successful!

This advertisement was created by designer San Francisco for the brand, Slice. Slice is a brand that sells kitchen equipment. The goal for changing the logo was to create a more playful, simplistic, and sharp design to better reflect the modern ideals of the company.

Slice is a modern, sleek contemporary brand that sells kitchen products, and most predominately equipment for slicing/cutting . The old and new logo strongly represents the product in a geometric form by giving the viewer contour within the logo itself. The contour is the most powerful aspect of the both designs; In the first design, the contour is geometrically square. Although the logo is cut in horizontally, creating an interesting visual, the words appear rectangular, straight, and not very static, creating a sense of stablity. The newly designed logo gives a more dynamic and static appearance. This is created simply by changing from the rectangular shape to what appears to be more triangular where it is cut off. The triangle shape creates more active movement and involvement with the visual aspect of the logo, which gives the logo power to draw individuals in. When looking at the logo it is still apparent that a rectangle/square was used to cut off the words and the new logo has the triangle shape used. As it was supported by the reading, the logo is both abstract and representational, however, I would say this logo would be deemed as more representational. The new and the old logo have the word “SLICE” which is strong enough to the represent the company that sells mainly cutting equipment; it is a very concrete word that everyone understands the meaning of it. It further supported that this logo is representational within the design when being “sliced” linearly or diagonally. I believe that the design would be able to have a sense of being abstract if the brand had a name that was not so concrete allowing the cutting design to be abstract in suggesting that the company sells cutting products. Due to the form the logo is  presented (printed on paper of products) and the intents of having a sharp/clean/modern design, the designer used the  medium of digital technology. This medium created a logo that is a literal representation of the company and therefore the design is not mediated. Any viewer will be able to look at the logo and understand that it is called “Slice” and the design is sliced in correlation. The designer has not created any personal artistic illustration of what the logo stands for that one would what the logo means

http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_and_identity_for_australian_olympic_committee.php#disqus_thread
This logo has to do with the Australian Olympics Committee. They wanted a more simple logo.

The previous logo for the Australian Olympic Committee was more  geometric than the present one. The reason is because the previous one has the traditional old shield in the middle of the kangaroo and Ostrich. The crest is a representation of man made object. It also has rectangle in the shield that are consider geometric. The star on top of the shield would also be geometric but the shading of the black on one side of the star make it seem three dimensional. The kangaroo and Ostrich are both Icons in the past logo because its structural similarity with the object signifies a kangaroo and bird.  Next the circles that make the Olympic logo are both geometric and organic since its can be associated to natural objects like the sun. The new design I would still consider geometric because of the star in the middle of animals yet the color green make it feel more organic even if its still using the same icon designs. I would have to say that both logos  are representational than abstract because the image is clean and visible to what they are. The kangaroo and the bird are more known to be located in Australia and I would consider them a styling option and semiology  option because it a sign of Australia. I know when I think of kangaroo , Australia is one of my next thoughts. The  Olympic circles would be another styling option but I would lean more towards a semiology design. I think the designer decided to change the logo to have a more clean and cut logo. I feel like the previous logo with the crest was a little to much and busy.  The company stands for a team that can represent Australia. It wants a more quick simple yet strong design for its competitors and its committee. The previous logo used a more geometric type of writing style because it has more sharp corners than the current logo. The current logo still has feel of geometric but its writing style is a bit more organic because the letters have a slight curve to them.

Organic: The logo on the right is more organic because of the hand drawn feel of the image. The edges are soft and the lines are all curved and yet are not perfect. When I look at the logo on the left it feels unprofessional or cheap in comparison to the logo on the right.

Geometric: The logo on the left is a lot more geometric in comparison to the older logo. The ribbon and text both have many straight edges and angles that add a cleaner feel to the logo. The gold ribbon and the clean lettering give off the impression that the company is interested in quality.

Abstraction: Both of these logos seem abstract in the sense that they don’t give me any idea of what the company is about. The shapes however themselves are easy to recognize and give the impression of an award winning company.

Representation: When you think about a ribbon the shape on the left only makes sense when the gold gradient on it. The added shading helps the eye recognize the shape as a bending ribbon rather than just a rectangle with a triangle missing.

Relation to the Company: These logos both don’t give me any idea about what this “Gold” company does. They are too simple to offer even a hint of what the company does. The logos are both easy to look at and clearly state the name of the brand but with out any context we cannot figure out the meaning behind the logo.

This redesign by Prophet is meant to refresh and update the Green Mountain Coffee brand to put it on par with other famous coffee company logos.
By clicking on the photo above you can link to the website Brand New which features this redesign. 

This redesign of the Green Mountain Coffee Logo is very organic considering its soft textured appearance. As the texts explains the previous logo could also be considered organic as well because of it’s circular shape but it could also be seen as geometric because of the hard lines and bold colors. I feel in comparison that the new design has a much more organic feel overall especially with the soft greens and rich browns as well as the visual image of a mountain which connects it with a natural appeal. Both of these logos are also representational. In the before logo the only image other than the words and the green oval behind them is a coffee bean and in the after logo the green, white, and brown are a very obvious representation of a mountain. Both images seem very literal and although one could argue that since the mountain image could be seen as abstract I think it was made with one specific purpose to make a mountain top. This redesign is also much more effectively mediated compared to the old one because the designer uses an image which resonates with most people in a particular way. When most people think of coffee beans or coffee they think of a plant which is very organic and so are mountains. Also by softening the greens and adding the rich brown I think they wanted the viewer to feel more connected to the logo due to fact that people associate those colors with again this earthy and organic vibe. I believe the designer made these redesign choices to promote a more earthy and natural feel for the brand and this marketing scheme go very well with any type of go green or natural audience.