It has been sometime since I have written and there are a lot of items going on. Some of the more worthy-to-note ones are the redesign of the TIME Magazine by Pentagram. I think the new layout and design is brilliant. I have given Pentagram a hard time in the past, but they did an amazing job with this.
There is a great read on the Digital Web Magazine site in their "The Working Designer" column. It is an article about the redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site by Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain.

Labels: 31three, Digital Web, Magazine, pentagram, redesign

Studio 360 commissioned Pentagram to redesign Christmas.

Here's a few thoughts on the matter;

The purpose of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. After hearing about the redesign of Christmas (where Christ is completely removed from it) I knew the world is officially going down hill. More than ever is Christmas about making money as shown in some of the ".mas" examples. Besides the removing of anything sacred about this seasons, the design is not all that great. This is another example of the big name design firm getting away with something that no other firm could get away with.

I know that they aren't totally serious about this whole concept but why don't we put a little more time and energy into the "true meaning" of Christmas...Christ. After all, He is what we built our nation upon from the beginning.

Read more about it on NYTimes website and at Studio 360.

Labels: christmas, design, pentagram

Does a big "design firm" name do more for a brand then a lesser known design firm? I look at the new Saks Fifth Avenue logo and brand and think, could anyone have gotten away with this, or is it because Pentagram did it? The answer is, probably not. As a designer you hear "Pentagram" and for some reason it is automatically good. I don't think this is the case on this logo. It's not that it's bad and the cut up typographical elements are intriguing, but for a brand identity that probably cost thousands - it could have been better. As I read through the the article there were a few things that stuck out to me. The first being that they took the same logo that was created in 1973, "... one stood out, the logo drawn in 1973 by Tom Carnese, adapted from a signature introduced almost twenty years before." The second is that they got a font designer to make the same thing and put it on a black background, "... We took the cursive logo, redrew it with the help of font designer Joe Finocchiaro, and placed it in a black square." Again, could any design firm have gotten away with this?

Labels: design, logos, pentagram