乐闻設計

2009 has been a great year for Brand New, with a bottomless source of new and redesigned identities from around the world, and we’ve all had good fun critiquing them in sickness and in health.

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Yale University Press

Designed by: Matthew Carter (Yale Typeface)
Release Date: September, 2009
Voting Highlight: 12% (152 of 1,194) Hate Paul Rand’s logo

To be perfectly fair, there is nothing formally wrong with the new logo, as it’s simply the word Yale typeset in the masterful work of Matthew Carter. But it is definitely sad to see one of Paul Rand’s most recognizable logos go away.



LendingTree

Designed by: Mullen
Release Date: July 2009
Voting Highlight: 87% (605 of 694) Voted it a Futuristic and Trendy logo

The old logo wasn’t much to get excited about but if fit the service and the audience, while the new one is awfully misguided to Terminators. Nice TV ads though.



Hilton Worldwide

Designed by: Landor
Release Date: September, 2009
Voting Highlight: 62% (795 of 1,274) Thought the Icon was Better without Bevels

This could have been a solid corporate redesign, but then they had to go mess it up by adding unnecessary bevels, and all the elements are a little too disparately placed, sized and aligned.



Art Directors Club

Designed by: Trollbäck + Company
Release Date: November, 2009
Voting Highlight: 73% (895 of 1,226) Voted it A Step Backward

Everyone pretty much agreed: Been there, done that. For an organization catering to the creative industry this was neither creative nor, um, industrious. And the follow-up showing the logo in action didn’t help much.



Burnley

Designed by: N/A
Release Date: October, 2009
Voting Highlight: 70% (835 of 1,178) said Wow… with Sarcasm

I was actually surprised at some of the positive comments for this one, which I still think is a sorry excuse of a logo. My cat has turned out hairballs with better execution and strategy than that. Also noteworthy: some clients competed for the privilege of using this logo.



Wisconsin Department of Tourism

Designed by: Red Brown Klé
Release Date: March, 2009

Poor choices in color and typography and even poorer decisions in configuration and scale make this one of the strangest logos of the year. Live like you mean it, but design like you mean it too.



Kraft Foods
Designed by: N/A
Release Date: February, 2009

While the well-known “race track” Kraft logo will remain on consumer product packaging, the parent company decided that it was too cool for them and instead opted for a crappy carnival of typefaces and random shapes.



Kraft Foods, Redux
Designed by: N/A
Release Date: July, 2009

Only five months later Kraft Foods unveiled a revised logo that was supposed to be an improvement. You know the expression “Putting lipstick on a pig”? This is like switching the lipstick from the pig’s mouth to the pig’s you-know-what.



City of Philadelphia
Designed by: The Star Group
Release Date: December, 2009
Voting Highlight: 60% (942 of 1,547) deemed it cliché

One thing you don’t want to do is upset Philadelphians — and judging by the amount of traffic we got to this story, there were many — by branding them with a web font (Trebuchet) and a terribly rendered Liberty Bell



Xe
Designed by: N/A
Release Date: May, 2009

Step 1 in the Bad Corporation Protection Program: Rename the corporation. Step 2: Redesign the logo. Step 3: Hope that people forget about your old brand in a couple of years. Oh, and regarding the logo, I have no idea what is going on.



MSN
Designed by: N/A
Release Date: November, 2009
Voting Highlight: 15% (165 of 1,073) thought the butterfly was great

The butterfly icon might get a passing grade, if I were extra generous, but the typography is simply ridiculous. I stand by my original quote, that I will also use as a segue to the very worst of 2009, “[The typography] suffers from Bing syndrome: It wants to be cool and modern but it suffers from complete lack of typographic decency. (This post is also worth revisiting if you want to read a pissing match between Futurebrand designers claiming credit for the original butterfly in the comments).



Bing
Designed by: Razorfish
Release Date: June, 2009

When I first posted the new logo for Microsoft’s search engine I blasted it for using scaled typography then “Bob,” who designed the logo at Razorfish, informed us that “All the letter forms were made from scratch.” I think I preferred to think this nastiness was done unknowingly than fully premeditated. Congratulations, Bing!

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My Little Pony
Designed by: N/A
Release Date: Summer, 2009
Voting Highlight: 4% (43 of 921) thought this was bad

I am sure many of you will think I am crazy for including My Little Pony here and, in all honesty, there were more technically impressive and stylistically appealing logos in 2009. Yet context plays a large role in identity design and within the market and audience that My Little Pony resides in, this was a superb update that could have turned out real ugly, real fast.



Meredith Corporation
Designed by: Lippincott
Release Date: August, 2009
Voting Highlight: 2% (12 of 1,105) Voted on the new icon being Boring

A lively, colorful and bold update for a women-focused media enterprise, devoid of female clichés like the color pink or script typography. Thank you Lippincott!



Commerzbank
Designed by: Meta Design
Release Date: November, 2009
Voting Highlight: 71% (602 of 840) Agreed this took the best from both worlds

The fact that the angle of the “K” matches the angle of the icon is reason enough to land this logo in the Best category, but everything about it is so carefully thought out and executed that there was no way I was leaving this out, even if it had its detractors.



El Banco Deuno
Designed by: Saffron
Release Date: January, 2009

I was one of the lone champions of this identity and I may have doubted myself at the time, but going back through the archives, this Mexican’s bank identity stood out from most of the entries.



Guitar Hero
Designed by: Pentagram
Release Date: September, 2009
Voting Highlight: 55% (519 of 930) Voted this as Rockin’

While some mourned the loss of the unrefined (hence more genuine) look of the original logo, the new identity is more fitting of the billion-dollar enterprise it represents. And, a spike more or a spike less, it still rocks.



Syfy
Designed by: Proud Creative
Release Date: March, 2009

The name change got everyone in a tizzy but by now and even more so moving forward, it’s not even an issue. And it sadly obscured what turned out to be a solid redesign.



MyFonts
Designed by: UnderWare
Release Date: January, 2009

Their previous logo didn’t set the bar too high, but the new custom lettering did, not just for them, but for the whole retail type industry. Some people hated that the “My” made a hand… Well, you can talk to it because the face ain’t listenin’.



Pfizer
Designed by: Siegel+Gale
Release Date: November, 2009
Voting Highlight: 62% (910 of 1,457) Considered the Logo Evolution an Improvement

The changes to the logo were small but they helped soften up the biggest of Big Pharma. The surrounding identity however was what made Pfizer really stand out from the rest this year.



New York Public Library
Designed by: NYPL In-house Staff
Release Date: November, 2009
Voting Highlight: 70% (728 of 1,040) Thought the New Lion was Roaringly Great

A great visual exploration of possible lion heads led to a great new icon for New York’s beloved institution. Works great at large and small sizes, something the old lion couldn’t brag about.



Nickelodeon
Designed by: Eric Zim (wordmark)
Release Date: September, 2009
Voting Highlight: 53% (853 of 1,609) Preferred the New vs. the Old logo

A complete overhaul of not just the Nickelodeon channel we all grew up with but of the whole enterprise that has grown into multiple channels airing in 175 countries, as well as a motion picture production company, and hundreds of Nick-branded toys and games. It’s not the nostalgic splat anymore but it’s not your attention they are after, so better deal with it. Like Syfy — perhaps even in a stylistic trend — this is a bold, simple wordmark that can carry Nickelodeon for another quarter of a century.



City of Melbourne
Designed by: Landor (Sydney)
Release Date: July, 2009
Voting Highlight: 67% (1,020 of 1,520) Thought this was Way Cool

This new identity gained early praise when we first announced it, and then we got a chance to see all the different “M”s and it became even cooler. In terms of visual execution and diversity, this was one of the strongest of the year.



AOL
Designed by: Wolff Olins
Release Date: November, 2009
Voting Highlight: 51% (1,232 of 2,374) are Willing to Give it a Chance

Amazingly, only 28% (673) Hated It, and 19% (469) Loved It

Hold the rotten tomatoes. I agree, AOL is neither technically nor aesthetically the best logo or identity of the year. But no identity will have a bigger impact in the evolution of a brand as AOL’s. Most companies brand to match their audience, AOL is branding to create a new audience. The name may conjure the 1990s but the identity is twenty-first century all the way. Wolff Olins may be the punchline for many designers but, even if you don’t know it or care to admit it, they are having the last laugh.