This is the history of one of the worlds most recognised brands. 

For more than 100 years the Shell pecten emblem and distinctive red and yellow colours have visualised the Shell brand and promoted the company's products and services all over the world.

The Shell logo has changed considerably since it's inception in 1900, yet you can still apreciate it's iconic form, whether viewing the original logo or in its current form.

I always remember Michael Wolff recounting his work on a redesign ...

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Back in 2013, when my wife was still pregnant with our son, we had a wonderful and memorable holiday, visiting KwaZulu-Natal. It was such a special time and I remember us travelling along the Midlands Meander, a feast for lovers of arts and crafts. I really recommend a visit!

On route we came across this wonderful trading post, with the buildings outside lined with vintage signage hoardings and the inside with an impressive collection of packaging from the past. My poor pregnant wife literal...

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Many years ago, I travelled across the USA. It was an incredible experience that I will always cherish. Business has kept me traveling back and I have since designed branding and packaging for some of the countries largest retailers. One of my memories of my time traveling the US was the bright branding used by the many of fast food companies. Competition in the US was so much greater than that of the UK, where at the time I had travelled from. Now living in Cape Town many of the chains are s...
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World renown branding agency Interbrand, have redesigned their famous word-mark, in-house. Moving the design into a clean but simple use of Helvetica, this supports their new look website. You can read more about interbrand below and can visit the site by clicking here.

More here:

Matthijs van Leeuwen project page

Johnny Trinh (website) project page

About Interbrand (from their website)

At Interbrand, we believe that growth is achieved when an organization has a clear strategy and delive...

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Australia’s largest airline has introduced a new logo and livery, designed in partnership with Quantas consultant Marc Newson and Australian branding agency Houston group.



In a press release, Quantas write:
The change is only the fifth time the red-and-white image on the tail of Qantas aircraft has been updated since it was first introduced in 1944. The last update was in 2007 to coincide with the introduction of the Airbus A380 to the national carrier’s fleet.

 

Marc Newson, who has help...
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I will always remember my first trip to Thailand! It was one of those life affirming moments, a sensory overload of experience and learning!!! Travelling has been a great way for me to experience other brands and how consumers interact with them on a daily basis. Brands that I have never seen before visiting that country. Brands that are like the ones I grew up with but different! I love it. 

 

One of the most confusing for me was seeing what look liked the Red Bull brand, but when I tasted t...

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The new logo for Mastercard, designed by Pentagram, has been raising eyebrows online and seems to be dividing the design industry on whether people are in favour or not.

    

I for one am a huge fan of the new design! I love how Pentagram have looked back at the heritage of the logo and brought back original elements, yet balanced it perfectly to create a brand-mark that is ultimately very modern and uncluttered. This is most evident within the choice of a clean and modern type style that has ...
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After a number of rigorous design checks, these are the shortlisted, final four logo's, chosen by the Games selection committee.

A. Harmonized chequered emblem
B. Connecting Circle, Expanding Harmony
C. Surpassing One’s Personal Best
D. Flowering of Emotions

Click here to visit the link, where you can read more on each selection.

Then, have your say! You can now help make the final selection by clicking here.

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A brief History of the Kentucky Fried Chicken brand.
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Over the past months we have seen some very high profile brand redesigns within the tech sector, including the likes off Google, Opera and Lenovo. To this end, I thought that it would be interesting to take a brief look behind the scenes at some of the agencies, processes and rationales that have been employed within each of the three projects.

Google
One of the most publicised re design is that of the Google logo mark, probably due to that fact that it plays such a huge part of our daily liv...
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In my Classic Brands series, I am going to feature interesting facts and a brief history to some of the world most iconic branding and packaging designs. I couldn't think of a better place to begin the series than with the worlds very first registered Trade Mark.

A great conversational piece at any dinner party is the question, ‘what was the world’s first brand identity?’ The answer is the instantly identifiable red-triangle of the Bass Pale Ale logo. This distinctive identity wa...
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Facebook has a new corporate identity designed in collaboration with it's in house team and Process Type Foundry’s Eric Olson. Although the new brand mark is a subtle move on there are a number of changes. Generally the characters are a lot more rounded (especially the ‘e’ and ‘o’). The original logos 'f' and 'a' worked together whereas the new logo has a single story ‘a’, The ‘b’ now has a prominent stem and overall its less bold in weight than the original.

This revis...
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My first visit to the US was to Florida. It was way back in 2000 and I traveled there to complete a course in sky diving. On the drive to the airfield each morning we would often make a stop at the local IHOP (international House of Pancakes) restaurant to fill up on food before an exhilarating day of jumping out of a perfectly good aeroplane! I always remember the poster on the window of that particular IHOP which read "Steak isn't just for breakfast!". For a small town boy from the w...
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Reading through the newspapers this weekend (01 July 2015) I came across this advert for the new Century City Conference Centre, opening in Cape Town in February 2016. I really like the branding that cleverly encompasses the four 'C's from the name and the clean type selection that's used in two weights. I also thought that the advert was very well executed. All in all a nice piece of work. Click here to read more about this exciting new project.

 

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In today's world of business a brand is likely to be a corporation’s most valuable asset. It's the DNA of most companies and represents everything that a business or its products stand for. An example of this is Apple's minimalist branding that depicts quality and craftsmanship whilst Oxfam's visual language illustrates a non profit charity with a logo that looks like it hadn't been designed by an agency, although of course it more than lightly has been! Brands have become the fabric of our...
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