this is fascinating.

the university of tennessee will be making the licensing switch from adidas to nike this year. nike has proposed to unite all programs, both athletic and academic, under one brand. this includes making the power-T the official logo and doing away with the "lady vols" brand for women's teams. all in the name of "one tennessee".

the lady vols, however, object. and it's mixing up my feelings about feminism and gender-quality and brand strategy and pat summitt. 

On Nov. 10, 2014 the university announced plans to transition all men’s and women’s athletic teams under the “Power T.” The decision coincided with a dual-rebrand between academics and athletics that would make the “Power T” the universal logo for the University of Tennessee, not just its athletic department. Under the new plan, which coincides with a shift from Adidas to Nike in athletic apparel, all sports programs except women’s basketball will be known as “Volunteers,” the nickname that’s defined the men’s side for decades. The change will be official on July 1.

UT first formed its women’s athletic department prior to the 1976-77 academic year, and the school had separate athletic departments until 2009. During that span the Lady Vols grew into one of the most impactful women’s brands in college sports. Lady Vols teams have won 11 national championships, including eight in women’s basketball, and 68 conference titles. The basketball team is the only program to play in all 33 NCAA tournaments since the NCAA began sanctioning women’s sports in 1981-82. An average of 11,038 fans attended Lady Vols home basketball games during the 2013-14 season, the highest average in the country.

But that success hasn’t been relegated to basketball. The Lady Vols softball team has reached six Women’s College World Series in the last 10 years. The women’s swim team has finished in the top 15 at the NCAA Championships in a school-record nine consecutive seasons. Tennessee won two women’s indoor track and field national championships (2005, 2009) within the last decade. That’s why many former student-athletes view the Lady Vols decision as a blow to a historic brand.

“Former Lady Vols always look after current Lady Vols,” Mansson said. “I got really upset because it felt like they took away my, and others’, identity.” (via)

in the end, the university has decided to let only the women's basketball program retain the lady vols logo, out of respect for the program's storied success under pat summitt, which seems like the worst possible solution.

meanwhile, deadspin's trying try to find a tennessee resident to request emails between nike and the university, if anyone feels like helping...

justin timberlake is in charge of bud light (platinum) now.

Justin Timberlake is apparently the new face of Bud Light Platinum, the fancy, "nighttime party drinker" (their words) brand of Bud. Explained the sometimes singer and MySpace investor: "Bud Light Platinum brings a refined, discerning aesthetic to beer that plays well with what I'm doing." It's pretty much impossible to top that sentence, so yeah, what he said. (via)

the death of vignelli

american airlines has redesigned their brand. take a look-see at the process:

the look of the brooklyn nets

(via)

remember jonathan brandis?

he was friends with that dolphin that could talk on seaquest. and he was really good at soccer and played on an all girls team called the ladybugs.

nErD aLeRt!

Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distill the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface, sending a visual message to the world that Chattanooga—a rapidly growing city in the midst of a creative renaissance—is “more than just your average Southern town.”

Chatype came about when D.J. Trischler, a brand consultant, discovered he'd been sitting next to typeface designer Jeremy Dooley at their local coffee shop. The two became fixated on a question: What if Chattanooga had its own typeface? The idea may sound strange from an American perspective, but it's actually the norm throughout Europe, where even small cities employ custom typeface to distinguish themselves. In the United States, the only similar attempt was a failed one by academics in the Twin Cities, according to the Chatype team. Yet Trischler and Dooley say this is the first-ever attempt to create custom typeface at the grassroots level, rather than from the demand of a city government. (via)

what i learned from this video is that people that live in chattanooga are weeeiirrrddd....

a cheetah.

(via)

thx t-dubz.

burger king : garden grill

it's healthy!

see?

get it?!?!

vEgEtaBLeS!!11

the worm and the meatball

a cute little history of the development of NASA's graphic image:

Up until that point, NASA had been primarily using an insignia adapted by James Modarelli, the head of NASA’s Lewis Research Center Reports Division. This logo, created in 1959 and affectionately dubbed “The Meatball,” relied heavily on multiple visual metaphors. According to NASA’s Web site, “the sphere represents a planet, the stars represent space, the red chevron is a wing representing aeronautics (the latest design in hypersonic wings at the time the logo was developed), and then there is an orbiting spacecraft going around the wing.” Although charming in its quirkiness, the meatball proved difficult to reproduce given the printing technology available at the time and the variety of applications it would need to adorn.

Enter Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn. They were hired to create, in Danne’s words, “a more useful new Logotype.” In a recently completed, yet to be published memoir, Danne describes the streamlined new design as “clean, progressive, could be read from a mile away, and was easy to use in all mediums.” Danne and Blackburn replaced the complex meatball with a stripped-down, modernist interpretation where even the cross stroke of the A’s were removed. 

...

Seventeen years later, despite its winning the prestigious “Award of Design Excellence” by The Presidential Design Awards, NASA scrapped the Danne and Blackburn design and re-instated “The Meatball.” Danne thinks this was at least partly due to how NASA chose to introduce the new logo to its various internal agencies in the first place. He says the redesign was kept secret until letters were set out to every center director … on their new stationery. Those loyal to the old design were offended, and a rivalry between “The Meatball” and the new design (unaffectionately dubbed “The Worm”) began. (via)

radical!

Vintage ABC Television Logo Treatments from Musk Ox on Vimeo.

vintage, unused concepts for the abc logo. via.

logo rainbow by dan meth

source
via

good idea.

Gap Inc. aborted a new logo after consumer criticism and will revert to the blue-square emblem that has been featured in its marketing for more than 20 years. (via)

gather 'round, for i have news.

we are rebranding!

what do you think?!

make your own crap logo here!

independent redesign of the new crap logo.

after the gap went and ruined their logo, which everyone was perfectly happy with, blog ISO50 sponsored an independent competition to come up with a new redesign (competition runs through 10.13.2010, so you can still enter!).

this is obviously the front runner:

i can appreesh the sarcastic approach :
i think this is a successful and subtle approach at updating a classic :
this is a nice example of how to age and cheapen a brand at the same time. makes me think of fossil in the 90's :
i actually like this logo, but gap would need to be an oil company for it to work :

looks like a logo for a convention center. barf :
kylie thinks this one looks like the REI logo, and i agree. gap doesn't sell ski coats!
what is this, an iphone app? get fucked :



[via]

is gensler responsible for this?

gap just unceremoniously launched a redesign of their logo (which no one had a problem with). the new result is banal and kind of internet trashy if you ask me. some helvetica letters and a gradient blue box... and they probably paid someone a million dollars to come up with that. read more here.

rebrand BP :: greenpeace

enter the snarky greenpeace competition to rebrand BP. then check out the other entries. all that OIL!
via

2016

if you were on the IOC and were asked to select the location of the 2016 Olympics based solely on the merits of the candidate city logo design, which would you choose? Keep in mind that Chicago has had two tries, their first was rejected for breaking the rules.

read descriptions here if you want. tell me in the comments which one you like best.

via

olive oil design

Design studio Base Design and industrial designer Michael Young have designed the packaging for a new premium olive oil produced Portuguese brand Herdeiros Passanha. (via)

f that s.

pizza hut's new brand.

rebranding america

paper magazine compiled 15 designs for a new image for the US.