Design

Interesting collection of current and older corporate brand guidelines including the Apple Web Design Guide from December 1996:

Keep Pages Short
Short pages are better than long pages. People are more likely to read a short passage of text than a long one, especially if they have to make an extra effort, like scrolling, to do it. Onscreen text is more difficult and time consuming to read than hardcopy text, which makes people even
less likely to thoroughly read long sections of text on a computer.

The Great Collection of App Pillows

Even cooler than the temporarily sold-out Ctrl+Alt+Delete Pillows are the Adobe App Pillows for people working in the design industry or nerdy enough to enjoy them. The Fl (Flash) Pillows would fit my apartment best but actually I use Ps (Photoshop) a lot more.

Not interested? Check out the Scrabble or Graphic Pillows

Ever wondered how Adobe Photoshop would look in real life?
Art Snob Solutions have rebuilt the software with natural, real materials. The color swatches, ruler, font panel, tool palette, … simply everything is handmade. This is NOT a photoshop job!

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Quicksprout compiled a list of creative business cards that will distinguish yourself from competitors. Some of the 51 business cards are a bit too much for my taste but here are the ones I find interesting.

The question is which print shop will produce them for a reasonable price.

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Lawyers for Apple Inc. have sent a letter to the Victoria School of Business and Technology claiming the logo is confusingly similar to theirs. More “Apple logos” used by education institues after the click.

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The Create Awards is one of the top creative competitions for professionals, and even students, in advertising, film & video, motion graphics, graphic communication, photography, printing, interactive media, and copywriting. Each Best of Industry winner will receive a generous prize package, as well as the Best of Student winner. A Best Of Show award winner will receive a $30,000 Dream Studio Prize Package with products from the industry’s leading companies (Adobe, Hewlett Packard, Kodak, and Alienware Computers just to name a few)!

Deadline for entries is June 29th 2007!

For more info on the how to enter, check out http://www.thecreateawards.com.

Real estate developer Omniyat Properties, based in Dubai, is planning to build an apartment tower inspired by Apple’s iPod MP3 player.

The 23-storey building, which is scheduled to bring more than 200 units onto the market in 2009, was designed by Hong Kong-based architects James Law Cybertecture International.

Read more at Gulfnews

I just found out that the third biggest bank of Spain, La Caixa, keeps it like Chupa Chups with Salvador Dali. In 1980 the spanish savings institute took a painting by Joan Miro as basis for its logo: a blue star, a yellow and red dot.
I’m wondering if there are even more artists, painters and the likes who inspire or create logos for companies!?

eboy created this great illustration for a Fortune magazine article on the resurgence of internet companies. The Berlin-founded company also does futuristic posters of cities, pixel pictures for companies and publishes books with “Die Gestalten”. They are the popstars of pixel-based art so to speak

Honestly, the old logo from publication design software company Quark was outdated and ugly but at least it had some unique characteristics. On the left is the new one: pretty modern and cool but

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For the sixth time and joining the recent rebrandings of Intel, at&t and Visa, Eastman Kodak Co. is introducing a new corporate logo designed to help the company forge a new image as a cutting-edge, 21st century innovator.

The box is gone, thus simplifying the logo mark. Above and below the rounded type font are two yellow bars. In my point of view Kodak is giving up a very recognizable logo and replacing it by a non-distinct one.

Update: The yellow horizontal bars that originally accompanied the logo image have been removed, as they are not officially part of the logo. However, the yellow will still be part of the overall identity and implementation.

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According to a press release in german newspaper WUV the american coffee company Starbucks has won a copyright battle that has lasted for over two years.
A court in Shanghai decided the chinese coffee chain “Xingbake” has infringed Starbuck’s brand.

The judge stated Starbucks has all rights on its name in English and Chinese, plus the exclusive right to use the brand’s design. Copyright infringements are common in China. Xingbake – with over 38 stores in Shanghai – has clearly copied the logo and name, furthermore Xingbake sounds very similar to Starbucks, says China Daily. Xingbake now has to pay 500 000 Yuan (around $54000).

Intel changed its 37-year-old logo as part of a major rebranding that will emphasize on the company’s shift away from the traditional PC business into consumer products.

The California-based company will discard its “dropped e” logo, used since its founding in 1968, and replace it by an oval swirl around the word ‘intel’, with the tag line “Leap ahead”. The company will also retire the “Intel Inside” advertising logo it has used since 1991. Both made Intel the fifth-most valued brand in the world, according to Interbrand.

Update: about Intel’s new font

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This device is so new, powerful and handy, OQO (Brand Directory: OQO), the company producing it, needed to create a new name. Not PDA, not MDA, not PocketPC, no. It’s called UPC as in “Ultra Personal Computer”

I’m yet to find a price but as I read from the specs this UPC should be pretty handy, especially for people like me always on-the-go.
It’s got (nearly) everything you need:

- WLAN
- USB/Bluetooth Connectivity
- 1 GHz
- 5″ screen with 800×480 resolution
- just 14 ounces

OQO has just received 20 million dollar of funding from Motorola which will be used for distribution, marketing and speeding up the development of upcoming devices, says CEO Jory Bell.

The Austrian mobile phone provider A1 has got an interesting showroom located on a main shopping street in Vienna. Built on 700m² it features a very modern interior design and futuristic computer interfaces to provide the guest with multimedia information. After all those flashy, trendy and shiny presentations visitors can go upstairs to relax at the bar.

The building is split into entry hall with terminals, (good) cocktails on the 1st floor and a shop in the cellar. What makes the shop stand out is that you get a virtual shopping cart (zombie-handy) on which you save your buyings, then move on to the cashier to checkout. So you don’t actually have to carry around real boxes.

After one year of existence the company now re-evaluated the concept and will change the location of the areas. The shop moves to the first floor, the bar will be located in the cellar with a new club concept.

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