Category: Brand Logos

Brand Logos

How Design Profits Nonprofits

By Delphine Hirasuna |

The goals of designing for a nonprofit are not much different than designing for a for-profit business. Nonprofits need to raise money, albeit for an altruistic cause. They need to build strong graphic identities, market their programs and convince the public that their good intentions will produce effective results. Yet many nonprofits approach marketing their organization half-heartedly, ending up with a look that is generic at best and sometimes sadly amateurish. Yes, they are hampered by low budgets and minimal staffing, but also at times by the misguided belief that if their materials look “too professionally done,” donors will think that they are squandering their money rather than applying it to the cause they care about.

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Brand Logos

Half of @Issue Logo Now in MoMA Collection

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Given the fact that so many people emailed us articles about the Museum of Modern Art in New York “acquiring” the @ symbol for its architecture and design collection, we believe that others made the connection to us as well.

Actually, the origin of the @ symbol is rather murky. One theory is that it was invented by scribes around the sixth or seventh century as an abbreviation of “ad,” the Latin word for “at” or “toward.” Then @ resurfaced on the keyboard of the first typewriter, the American Underwood, in 1885, as a shorthand way of stating “at the rate of” on accounting documents. With the exception of bookkeepers, few people used the @ key, which apparently was the reason why an American programmer named Raymond Tomlinson decided to appropriate it in 1971 when devising a system to state the first email address. Tomlinson concluded that a succinct way to let email senders identify themselves was by separating the user name from the host computer from which it was sent with the @ sign. That made perfect sense and quickly became the language of the global email realm.

In 1994, when we were trying to come up with a name for our new business and design journal, the @ symbol seemed like a clever way of implying that we were at the cutting-edge of contemporary issues. Little did we realize that in 2009 when we launched ourselves as a magablog, we couldn’t register “@Issue” as our url and had to go with the annoyingly awkward “atissuejournal” if we wanted to keep some semblance of our name. But, in our heart, we will always be @Issue. Now, we are proud that half of our logo has been inducted into the MoMA collection – we’d be even prouder if MoMA would take the other half of our logo too.

Brand Logos

Logos…the Movie

By Delphine Hirasuna |

“Logorama,” which won this year’s Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, is a movie made up entirely of logos. Remarkable in itself, this award is testament to the fact that logos have risen beyond tools for brand marketing and have become the most recognizable images of pop culture around the world. Written and directed by H5’s Francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy and Ludovic Houplain, “Logorama” is a 16-minute animated crime story that takes place in Los Angeles (where else?). Brand logos not only comprise the landscape, they are the heroes and villains of the film. The plot, which has shades of Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” gone seriously awry, revolves around a curvaceous Esso girl, a sinister Ronald McDonald, Michelin men cops and a dapper Mr. Pringles, with cameo appearances by more than 2,500 logos and corporate brands. At a time when brand advertisers pay huge sums of money to sneak their product into the scene of a feature film, even for a few seconds, “Logorama” turns the concept of brand placement on its ear.