The brand identity for Coventry Moves embraces the city’s past, present, and future, and contains icons and shapes inspired by brutalism and modernist architecture
The identity has been designed by Uncommon Creative Studio, and is inspired by brutalist elements and modernist architecture in a nod to the city’s rebuilding after World War II. Based on a modular system of squares and simple shapes, the identity also aims to play on the innovations, movements and stories that have come to characterise the city. The graphic icon in place of the ‘O’ for instance, can be interchanged with various circle-like symbols to represent the industries that have played a role in Coventry’s make-up, such as bicycles, clocks and watches, aircraft and music.
The bright blue that features throughout is tied to Coventry’s medieval past as a centre of the UK’s textile industry. Distilled from the colour of historical yarns, the hue has been named Moving Blue and adds brightness to an otherwise monochrome aesthetic.
DesignStudio has created the branding for the League of Legends European Championship, which aims to build a sense of community in light of lockdown measures.
While the global pandemic has caused major disruption to the vast majority of sporting events, the world of esports has fared comparatively well. In fact, traditional sports have entered the esports landscape more than ever before, with tournaments like the virtual Grand Prix pitting traditional athletes and gamers against one another for the first time.
Yet the impact on events has still filtered down to the gaming world, with significant tournaments such as the League of Legends European Championship (LEC) having to forgo live crowds and in-person experiences at the finals this summer, and instead rely solely on streaming to audiences online.
With the crowd element removed, DesignStudio is aiming to engage viewers of the LEC Summer Finals 2020 by creating a dynamic identity for the event. The identity and motion graphics tap into the language of social media and online communities with hashtags and arcade-inspired emojis, while the tickertape effect evokes the atmosphere of major arena events. As part of the project, DesignStudio also developed a quiz, as well as a futuristic teaser film that acknowledges no arena could be ‘found’ for the tournament, before culminating in a range of motivational messages about the event.
The team looked to 8-bit graphics and classic arcade games for inspiration, yet the overall look and feel is decidedly contemporary – so much so that certain design elements would look quite at home in club culture.
The LEC Summer Finals 2020 branding aims to further this sense of pride and uniqueness in the esports community, in a bid to continue “breaking those entertainment barriers”. That design cues seen in electronic music can exist comfortably in the esports space indicates how preconceptions about the gaming community are being eradicated. “It doesn’t have to be geeky and nerdy and weird. The same people that play those games also attend electronic music festivals,” Ng says. “Why does there need to be a differentiation?”
We’re loving the bright and inviting design for the biggest convenience store chain in Sweden, Pressbyrån. The warm earth grey paired with the sunny yellow remind us of the earth and the sky, and are not busy enough to distract from the beautiful illustrations of people living their life underneath a golden orange sun. The illustrations represent every-day people doing every day tasks like flying a kite or delivering the mail, small reminders that life happens in these moments. The way the illustrations interact with the colors as if they’re land is the beautiful marvel of the design.
We at Super Tuesday design agency in Stockholm have created a new bold yet sweet design for Pressbyrån’s disposable On the Go-material. Pressbyrån is Sweden’s biggest convenience store chain and needed an updated after 5-6 years of the same look.
Super Tuesday created a design concept infused with Pressbyrån’s DNA where we wanted to capture people on the move that in a playful manner interacts with the big hero, “the sun”– taken from the logotype. By creating small illustrative figures, and placing them together with the eye-catching Pressbyrå-yellow sun, we ended up with a bold, modern and strong design. All material was changed to more environmentally friendly alternatives, as this is an important matter for Pressbyrån (and should be for everyone). The new design was launched in Feb 2020.
Pentagram partner Natasha Jen has rebranded the Google-owned GPS app, introducing a whole of host of cute creatures that mimic the many moods of drivers on the road.
Pentagram partner Natasha Jen was commissioned to create a new visual identity based on Waze’s crowdsourcing roots and collaborative spirit, working in collaboration with the app’s head of creative Jake Shaw.
At the heart of the rebrand is the updated Wazer symbol, which now features a rounder, more upright form to emphasise its speech bubble shape and the app’s focus on communication. The accompanying refreshed logotype is based on Boing, a sans serif typeface with rounded corners designed to give a friendlier look.
Jen’s team also developed a new visual language for the app called Block by Block, which is inspired by the modular design of city grids and road systems. The geometric grid ensures consistency across everything from infographics to email templates, featuring a flexible array of colourful block-like shapes.
Illustration has always been a big part of Waze’s visual identity. The new branding brings greater clarity to this style, with Jen and her team redrawing existing icons and establishing a style guide for new illustrations going forward.
The first ever TGI Fridays opened on the corner of New York’s 63rd and 1st in 1965. It was swiftly popularised not as the casual-dining family restaurant that it is today, but as a singles bar for cocktail-swilling young adults in Manhattan; one of the first of its kind and apparently the inspiration for Tom Cruise’s bartender character in the film Cocktail.
More recently, and much like the rest of the food scene on the high street, the restaurant chain has struggled to stand out against the raft of independent burger joints and street food venues that dominate our cities.
Working with the company’s new leadership team, SomeOne has been rethinking the TGI Fridays brand over the past six months, stripping it back down to a tagline that captures the essence of its New York origins: The Fridays Feeling.
“Our vision is to make Fridays famous again so we needed to breathe fresh life into the brand by relevantly leveraging the past,” says the chain’s CEO, Robert B Cook. “The Fridays Feeling is the inspiration for our new food and drink menus and a service plan designed to consistently deliver the best guest experiences and a generosity of spirit.”
SomeOne started by reducing the brand name down to just Fridays, based on the fact that the meaning of TGI had become lost and confused over time.
Another design feature from the restaurant’s roots is the use of bold vertical red and white stripes, which nod to the original awnings of the 1965 bar, and also take inspiration from historic circus company Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey.
Snickers is the latest brand to release an ad that would have made zero sense to us a year ago, but is likely to raise a much needed grin in our weird new existence.
The spot highlights some of the habits we might have got into in our Zoom-heavy set up, and why it pays to be cautious as we emerge blinking into a more social world again.
Credits: Agency: BBDO New York CCO: David Lubars ECDs: Gianfranco Arena, Peter Kain Creative directors: Scott Mahoney, Dan Oliva Production company: O Positive Director: Jess Coulter
Designed by ArtCenter student Tallulah Villareal, the concept line uses muted colors and striking typography to reinvigorate the timeless brand for a new generation. Plus, the introduction of sustainable elements might just push the skincare brand into the future.
Mario Badescu’s mission has always been to brighten up the world with their time-tested skin care products and treatments. With a commitment to providing customers with the best ingredients and best services, the look of the product became secondary.
Barcelona-based agency Vasava takes a trip down memory lane by reimagining classic children’s book covers in a bid to encourage a new generation of readers.
Some of the titles Vasava has renewed, such as Treasure Island and Around the World in 80 Days, are books less popular with kids today, so the agency adopted an eye-catching concept. “We incorporated illustrations into the lettering, creating vignettes, which would act as a visual synopsis for each novel,” says the studio. “The comic book style was paired with bright colour palettes to create a happy and inviting collection of books that any kid would proudly display on their bookshelf.”
Cover for Alice in Wonderland
Each title has its own lettering which hints towards the story within, such as Peter Pan’s flowing type that makes the reader think of pirate flags and Wendy’s old-fashioned nighty. To really bring the covers to life though, Vasava took a detailed approach when deciding what the illustrations should contain and they started by highlighting the key characters, locations and objects from each of the novels.
Cover for Peter Pan
The collection of covers pop with vibrant, clashing colours and are crammed with intricate illustrations. What ties the whole series together is the vintage treatment of each title, reinforcing the idea of the books as literary classics.
The luxury department store has unveiled new branding by Pentagram’s Harry Pearce that borrows cues from the historic sign that first hung over the door.
The new logo puts the name of the store front and centre, dropping the reference to its London home and instead moving it to additional brand assets alongside a redesigned crest. The iconic deep purple hue remains intact across the packaging design, while the gold seen across the lettering has been “refined”.
The new branding draws upon Liberty’s lengthy history, in particular the original sign used at its Great Malborough Street location, though the historic link may appear subtle to casual onlookers thanks to the identity’s decidedly sleeker look.
The connection to the past is established in smaller details like the full-stop, which has been reinstated on the wordmark as per the original sign. Meanwhile, the angular serifs have been dropped from the logotype in favour of a new sans-serif typeface similarly rooted in the original design.
“The process of rebranding Liberty has been one of craft, archaeology and refinement,” says Pearce. “The logotype itself hails from the lettering in the original sign above the Great Marlborough Street front door, carefully redrawn to make it the most authentic logotype in Liberty’s history.”
Founded in 1840, Yale began life as a New York-based manufacturer specialising in handmade bank locks. Today, it is one of the longest-running international businesses in the world, with million of Yale locks in use worldwide.
Yale’s refreshed visual identity includes a bespoke typeface by Jeremy Tankard and new UX, motion and sonic branding, all of which are centred around its distinctive sun-shaped logo. “We looked for something universal that would be understood around the globe. Yale already had a round yellow logo so that turned out to be a gift we could work from,” says GW+Co principal Gilmar Wendt.
“We landed on the sun as the core design idea because Yale is a warm and positive brand. You can rely on it always being there (even if you don’t see it) giving you peace of mind, and it is a big idea that is universally understood.”
The rebrand is currently rolling out internally, and will be seen externally later on in the year. For Wendt and the rest of the GW+Co team, the project has exemplified the challenges of rebranding a historic company like Yale for the digital era. “There is a need to create a future vision that builds on the past, rather than brushing it aside,” he says.
Graphic Design 