Belkin – Branding by Wolff Olins

Browsing through some different branding projects and logo designs, and once again I’ve come across another Wolff Olins design that I’ve become a little obsessed with. This is probably the least conventional identity for a technology brand I’ve seen (though maybe not aesthetically – it looks sleek, modern and technological for sure – the dots of the icon do feel like a familiar technological image) but the combination of the stylish image and the concept behind it communicates really well.

One of Belkin’s main approaches has always been to design people-inspired products, and so the branding, though essentially being used to promote technology, is based around this connection between the company, the people, and the products – with the technologically styled human image, possibly the cutest character-based logo I’ve ever seen. (Just saying that I feel incredibly guilty for the Panda – well played WWF.)

Check out more of the branding project here.

xWare Branding – Sebastian Gram

Just came across this branding project by designer Sebastian Gram in Denmark, and just love seeing the development sketches for the logo design (too many glossy, finished logos in design portfolios, in my opinion, account to the preconceptions that logos are just whipped together and made pretty). Though some conceptual development would make it even more interesting (if there was a whole lot), the logo drawings are quite powerful have a clear modern, technological feel, and a nice rather abstracted typographic feel. Well applied across different forms too, the CDs and website especially.

Design Agency: Kent Lyons

With quite minimal and clean work, simple typography with a clear helvetica-atmosphere, and limited colour schemes, at first glance of the design work of agency Kent Lyons, it’s difficult not to appreciate their clean, pleasing aesthetics, but equally easy to place their work within that corporate, minimal graphic design box. It’s fair to say, I wasn’t entirely sure I’d have a lot to say about their work, and it took some real consideration to really appreciate their portfolio for any sense of uniqueness. The first design that stood out to me was the branding of Film London – a stunning typographic, conceptual logo that I’d fallen in love with once. It’s always nice to find out the designer behind a piece of design I’d glanced at once, but recalling it inspired me to really look at their work in a more intellectual light – and I realised just how wonderfully conceptual a lot of their work is.

Two of my favourite typographic pieces within their portfolio are the “Rmeixes” CD-packaging (the clever typographic element of which is only emphasized by the pleasing, minimal aesthetic), and the “competitive edge” element in a London Innovation leaflet design, which utilizes the form perfectly to play with concept. The agency’s skill with packaging and book-making perfectly accompanies their conceptual and heavily typographic, minimal design work – creating some really interesting work that generic, minimal, corporate work.

Eurostar Identity

I have to admit this isn’t a logo that I was a fan of at first – generally, I’m not too keen on 3D-effects, or shine. But after considering it for a while, I have to say I’ve become rather fond of it. Paticularly, I think the change of materials has helped this – I think there’s a bit of a stigma attached to 3D, shiny logos regarding whether they’re just aesthetically embelished, without any conceptual merit. The variations from the shiny, metal look create a variety of interesting applications, both aesthetically and conceptually, in connoting different classes.

I’m not sure where this piece of foliage came from, but it’s a nice example of taking the branding into a 3D format, rather than just a digital, 3D-looking logo, emphasising the company’s state-of-the-art, beautifully design-led ethos and ambition.

The expansion of the branding into this custom-embelished font is also one of the winners for me. The font used as a basis for the embelished typeface, is Fresco Informal (Available here – though sadly the custom elements do not appear to be available) The elongated tails, added onto letters generally at the beginning and end of text used within their advertising, are not only aesthetically pleasing (on the upper-case A especially), but incorporates the feel of the corporate identity well, and connotes the beauty of design central to the company.

Fantastic article on the identity here.