94. Dynamic Identity.

Recently, I was sent this article written by Alice Rawsthorn at the International Herald Tribune (which has a great style and design section by the way.) In this article she discusses the trend for companies to have dynamic, seemingly ever-changing identity systems instead of one static logo. She uses Sak's Fifth Avenue new identity (we blogged about it here,) MTV, Google's versatile logotype and others to demonstrate this newer design trend and concisely discusses the pros and cons. I offer up Snickers (see this and this) and Perrier (download this pdf) as two recent examples of not just versatile identities but dynamic logos that are actually the advertising message in themselves. The article is food for thought for anyone designing an identity system, though I think it's pretty easy to decide when this makes sense and when it doesn't. Ask youself: does the added versatility serve a longterm purpose?

Comments

[Jason]

Really interesting - thanks for the link, and for pointing out the IHT article. Coke also did some weird stuff with its logo in the world cup last year.

[JJ]

Hmmm... the coke link isn't working for me. Care to come back and post again? Curious to see the examples.

[jason]

Hmmm. Sorry about that. Maybe my HTML skills aren't so, um, skillful. That pesky extra backslash at the end seems to be throwing it off.

Try this:
http://lbtoronto.typepad.com/lbto/2006/06/the_mystery_of_.html

Or if that doesn't work, just poke around in the archives from June 2006 on the site.

Cheers
J

[JJ]

That coke stuff is weird. Maybe the strangest thing I've seen a company do in a long while. Thanks for sending the link. Awesome.