Chicago has finally come up with a logo design that is intelligent, exotic and most of all according to the IOC standards. The new Chicago Olympic logo is without the torch; however the identity is still prolific with a six pointed star taking center stage. This icon is similar to the star in Chicago’s flag.

The revamped Chicago Olympic logo was presented on Wednesday, September 19th amid a lot of fanfare at the Walt Disney Magnet School. The new logo was unveiled by the Mayor of the city joined by a group of famous Olympians.

Earlier, the previous logo that featured the Olympic-style torch was ruled out by the International Olympic Committee, as it was against the Olympic emblem/logo rules which state that candidate city logos cannot contain any Olympic symbol. This includes the Olympic flag as well as any other imagery related to the Olympics such as a flame, torch, rings, medal, and so forth.

Fortunately this decision was taken in their stride by the official Chicago 2016 team. They understood that the IOC was only trying to safeguard and carry on the Olympic movement. Thus they decided to formulate a brand new Chicago Olympic logo for the international phase.

Just like the previous one, the new Chicago Olympic logo, was designed free of cost by Chicago based VSA Partners. Even though the imagery has changed, the color palette has remained the same.

According to the design team of the Chicago Olympic logo, the colors were kept the same as they maintained a brand identity. Also, the slogan “Stir the Soul” will continue to be used. The dominant white star in the new Chicago Olympic logo symbolizes a beacon and guiding light perfectly. It also represents athletic greatness.

The star on the Chicago Olympic logo is set against bands or ribbons of color, which signify award ribbons and medals that athletes achieve in the games.

The color palette is used to denote the same concept portrayed within the previous logo; the yellow represents the city’s architecture and sky line. The red color is employed to show passion for sports whilst the green and blue below stand for the city’s parks and the Michigan Lake respectively.

The points of the Chicago Olympic star are meant to be a symbol of hope, harmony, respect, friendship, excellence and celebration.

According to the Mayor of Chicago, the new Chicago Olympic logo will become “a great symbol for the city and nation”, as they strive towards attaining the opportunity to host the Olympics and Paralympics.

Further moderations within this logo can be expected if the city is short listed as a final candidate next year. Most likely, it will win the right to include the Olympic rings into its logo.

The new Chicago Olympic logo is a highly visible, striking and recognizable identity for Chicago’s bid efforts. The imagery as well as the pertinent concepts it presents prove to be very successful. The new logo has been received well by most and VSA have shown us that a hat trick can take place by finding a worthy replacement for the torch in the Chicago Olympic logo.

Note:Chicago is a candidate city in the United States bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. The final selection will be made by the International Olympic Committee on October 2, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark from a bunch of international contenders.

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The National Football League (NFL) has recently decided to launch a makeover of its red, white and blue “NFL Shield” logo, as announced by Lisa Baird, the NFL’s senior vice president of marketing.

The current design of the NFL logo dates back to the 1940s, and has had no change since the last two decades. The logo consisted of twenty five stars, and carried an overall soft image.

The redesigned shield, however, will be slightly taller and thinner, displaying darker colors than the previous logo. The latest version of the NFL logo shows a new crisper football, resembling the one on the Vince Lombardi championship trophy.

The most significant change in the NFL logo will be seen in the number of stars. There will be only 8 stars in the new version of the NFL logo, representing the eight divisions or sub conferences of the league. Due to the reduction in the number of stars, NFL vendors (Reebok, Riddell, Wilson, EA Sports and etc) must be really content with this new change, as they were facing trouble indenting so many stars onto trophies. They also had to shoehorn the same onto everything from player jerseys to fan T-shirts and hats, uniforms and licensed merchandise. This makeover of the logo is the first such attempt to the shield since 1980.

Currently, the NFL and design and branding experts and critics are waiting to see how football fans react to the change in the NFL logo, after all not every change is a good change and it takes a while to accept what’s new. Though, from a designer’s perspective, the transformation in the NFL logo is a marked improvement from the previous version. The sharper font, darker colors and the use of fewer elements in the shield, makes the NFL logo look bolder and distinguished.

About NFL: The National Football League (NFL) is the largest and most celebrated professional American football league. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association and was named NFL in 1922. The league presently comprises of thirty-two teams from all over America, divided evenly into two conferences - the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC).

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Many companies strive towards a flexible and varying identity to avoid looking stagnant, and out of date. Brands such as Google, MTV and now VH1 have managed to make this concept come to life, by altering their logos faster than any fashionista’s wardrobe. By adopting such customized symbols and reinventing their identity from time to time, they adhere to the iconoclasts’ principle which dictates that one becomes bored with viewing the same identity over and over again. Hence, a change is more likely to attract enthusiastic attention. However, this view is heavily argued by traditionalists who remain steadfast to their belief that the more you look at a certain logo, the better it sticks in your mind. It reiterates a sense of recognition and remembrance, thus causing the identity to achieve familiarity and making the product marketable.

Saks Fifth Avenue’s latest visual identity has been praised as a ground breaking concept, especially since it is the first of its kind in the retail luxury sector. The identity design is complex, yet magically simple. The new logo is a revamped version of a previous Saks logo used in 1973. The calligraphic script is the same; however it is narrower and looks regal in white coloring within a black square.

The head designer on this project Michael Bierut is a partner at a top class design firm “Pentagram”. Michael came up with a concept of slicing the new Saks logo into 64 squares, and then asked a theoretical physicist at Yale University to calculate all the possible combinations in which the squares could be arranged. And it is interesting to note that the physicist’s answer came close to a billion possibilities of groupings!

According to the designer, “Blowing up the logo and rearranging the fragments in a million different ways on a grid made the identity much more dramatic.” And kudos to him because the resultant identity is undoubtedly show stopping - a successful variation on the “lets make a pattern out of our logo” school of thought. The spliced arrangements are bold and give a very festive feel to the bags, boxes, adverts and signage.

It is important to note how this unique identity defies the traditional thought of what an identity should be. We are conditioned to perceive an identity as a singular mark fashioned in a stand alone manner and catering to various materials in a number of ways. An emphasis is always laid upon the original identity mark’s visual integrity. This new design negates this point of view entirely, as the foundation mark loses its identity when broken down and rearranged in so many different ways. However, this obscurity of the logo mark within the identity is what makes the identity original yet pertinently links it to the logo as well.

It is a bold move on Saks’ part to embrace the elemental nature of this new identity as a whole.
All in all it is a spectacular use of a classic mark, and then a modern twist applied to it. The large cutouts are elegant, sophisticated and modern looking. The concept is highly refreshing and is a perfect example of simple yet effective graphic design.

Note: Headquartered in New York City, Saks Fifth Avenue is a chain of American department stores. It competes in the elite luxury department store market with Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys New York. The products include clothing, footwear, handbags, bedding, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, and housewares.

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Latest in the news about the paparazzi’s favorite celebrity Britney Spears is her soon to be debuted fragrance “Believe”. Renowned cosmetics company, Elizabeth Arden, will soon launch “Believe” which is Britney’s latest and third in line fragrance (the first two being “Curious” and “Fantasy”), branded by the cosmetics giant. Sadly, the starlet’s already sinking career is stricken with allegations of logo copyrights violation in the “I believe” / “Believe” frenzy.

After much speculation, it has been noted that the perfume’s brand is a total rip-off of a Canadian charity organization “Mondonation”. Monodonation came up with a distinct, simple and heartfelt scheme through which people are given a chance to tailor a personal principle onto a t-shirt, a slogan of something they believe in.

The best aspect of ‘mondonation’ is that it donates a portion of the profit earned from the sale of it’s “I believe” t-shirts to various charities worldwide. With the “believe” t-shirts, the company has managed to touch and inspire a great number of people, proof of which can be seen after viewing their YouTube videos (some of those videos have been viewed almost 700,000 times!).

It is sad to see that the charitable opportunities created by the mondonation brand may be damaged by the infringement of their identity. Thousands of people have bought the “I believe” t-shirts and support the many charities working with ‘mondonation’. It will be a pity to see the t-shirts become an advertisement for Britney Spears’ new perfume. Elizabeth Arden, the company launching the “believe” perfume has shown some really shocking and inconsiderate business values for harming a brilliant and positive brand image. They have deliberately and unashamedly copied another organization’s logo. Therefore, they should make things right by penalizing the design team that imitated mondonation’s original “I believe” insignia, and must also compensate by giving a donation to mondonation as a compensation for the damage caused to the charity and its cause.

On other note, some people state that the rip by Elizabeth Arden may have been an unintentional mistake, considering that the typeface used in the fragrance logo is not the same as the original mondonation “I believe”. Certain designers have also tried supporting the attempt. They say that the similar use of colors could have been a mistake since the colors pink and green are parallel to each other on the color wheel, and designers tend to pick colors that are next to each other on the wheel.

Nevertheless, mistake or no mistake, it is a little difficult to believe that the design team of such an influential company could actually make such a big blunder. For most of us with common sense, it is very clear to see that the perfume carrying the pop princess’s name has ripped off the charity’s identity. No wonder so many indignant supporters of the charity have lodged official complaints against Elizabeth Arden to stop the launch of the fragrance and change the logo.

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The newly re-branded Citibank logo was unveiled on February 13, 2007. The launch event, which was notably quiet, featured the announcement of the sale of the umbrella logo, and the creation of the new modified signature system. This change was an endeavor to merge the group’s various companies into one unified ‘Citi’. The change took place primarily due to the transformation of Citibank from “Citigroup” to “Citi”. This transformation was made in 1999; however, the emendation of the brand logo was put off, as the CEO of the Citibank Corporation, Charles Prince, was waiting to eliminate the umbrella from the iconic logo; by selling it back to the St. Paul Travelers Companies. This transaction was eventually made and the amount generated was apparently used to pay for the new “Citi” re-branding.

Landor, the world renowned strategic brand consulting and design company, successfully won the chance to execute this assignment. And the team, handling the project, was headed by Pete Harleman.

The formal name was changed from “Citigroup” to just “Citi” in every respect. “Citigroup” is nevertheless still the corporation’s legal name. The word “Citi” was added to all unit names apart from the Mexican Banamex and the distant unit Primerica. This change is best described as a brand consolidation rather than a re-branding effort as it affects internal agents far more than the external ones.

Hence, the retail bank’s blue-red “Citi” will be applied to unit signatures, but with gray/ silver letterforms. The change hasn’t been responded to with too much enthusiasm. According to some, the previous logo featuring the “Citibank” word mark and compass rose, generated far more impact and is felt to be more confident in depicting a bold visual presence and stature.

Nevertheless, the “Citi” prevails and as agreed by all, has managed to encompass all the units and creates a sense of unity which was previously amiss. Without the umbrella logo, the brand is portrayed positively with a more formal and reserved personality and the gray/silver express the distinction wonderfully.

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