I was just re-reading a post yesterday that I had written just prior to the NHL season regarding the Washington Capitals Logo and how the eagle somewhat resembled the D.C. United’s Logo. Ironically, today the D.C. United unveiled new uniforms, which don’t feature a new eagle form or anything of the like. In fact, the uniforms haven’t changed much at all, if you exclude the large Volkswagen logo planted smack dab in the middle of the jersey.

That’s right, the D.C. United now sport the big VW on their uniforms and from what I’m gathering, the reception has been rather good. You can read more about the finer details by visiting the team’s official blog, Behind the Badge.

“We left our jersey blank for a long time because it was so important that the brand we associated with matched up and complemented our D.C. United brand,” said D.C. United managing partner Victor MacFarlane. “I’m pleased to say we’ve found that brand.”

Not being a passionate soccer fan myself, I suppose I’m unsure of how autos conceptually meld with soccer. I realize that the sport has a stronger following in Europe and Volkswagen is European, so I guess that’s something, but we’re in America, right? Anyway, I do like the jerseys and having one of the most well-established symbols on the planet, can only help the sales of merchandise and ticket sales.

In terms of co-branding, D.C. United’s team logo is obviously not the focal point. I presume that with soccer, this is more of the trend, or perhaps this is helping establish a trend where sponsors play more of a central role in the marketing. Perhaps this sport’s marketing will evolve to be somewhat akin to Nascar, where the focal point on the cars is the sponsor.

In any case, Volkwagon is a great brand, soccer is a far reaching sport, and the D.C. United has been one of the most successful teams in the MLS, so this should a great development. Per the agreement itself, the new arrangement gives Volkswagen licensing rights to the United’s jerseys, stadium displays, and preference for stadium naming rights when a new one is determined. The deal is reported to be one of the most lucrative to date for the sport in the U.S., at an estimated $14 million.

Volkswagen’s initiative was conceived in conjunction with their recent re-location of their stateside headquarters to my hometown of Herndon, VA, a suburb of Washington D.C. “We are very proud to be part of the greater Washington, D.C. community,” said Stefan Jacoby, president and CEO of Volkswagen’s U.S. division. “We always said when we moved to D.C. and when we moved closer to our customers, to be a real marketing organization, we want to be also showing our local commitment by partnering with a great organization in this area and we are happy that you waited so long for us.”

I have a feeling that the arrangement will work out well, and we should be seeing these jerseys around town pretty soon!

• Read the official press release
• Read more about Volkswagen

Xerox Logo Rebranding

This week marks a biggie for rebranding aficionados, with the redesign of the Xerox corporate logo. There is already a lot out there on the topic, so I won’t totally reinvent the wheel.

Xerox’s perspective on the Logo Rebranding

“There has been a perception gap in the marketplace,” said Richard Wergan, vice president of worldwide brand marketing and advertising. “Xerox is still perceived incorrectly as a copier company. We do not make copiers.”

Wergan would not say how much the research for the new logo cost, but said it was a “significant multimillion-dollar marketing investment.”

From the Official Press Release:

The new Xerox logo is now a lowercase treatment of the Xerox name - in a vibrant red - alongside a sphere-shaped symbol sketched with lines that link to form an illustrative “X,” representing Xerox’s connections to its customers, partners, industry and innovation, and designed to be more effectively animated for use in multi-media platforms.

“Our brand is one of our most prized assets and the value it brings to our business is immeasurable,” added Ursula M. Burns, president, Xerox. “Our customers, our employees and our shareholders connect the most with what the brand stands for — quality, innovation, customer-focus and a values-rich culture. Today, we’re strengthening all our attributes and giving our brand a contemporary look that is more relevant for business today - a bit less formal, a lot more lively with links to our heritage and a nod to the future.”

From Business Week:

Making the Brand More Approachable

Designed in the 1960s by branding firm, Chermayeff & Geismar, the familiar block-capital-letter XEROX wordmark, most often seen around the world in red, did not lend itself to the three-dimensional world of Internet and mobile-phone marketing canvases. The new logo, created in FS Albert font, is accompanied by a symbol—a red sphere that is trying to convey a sense of the globe. The intersecting graphic ribbons encircling the sphere signify the worldwide connections between Xerox’s customers, employees, and other stakeholders. The new wordmark, with softened and rounded lower-case letters, is a far cry from the former imposing logo hatched in an era when U.S. Steel and IBM were kings of the corporate mountains.

The new graphic identity of the company is meant to make Xerox a more approachable brand without compromising its reputation for engineering. In fact, an internal document circulated between Interbrand and Xerox describes the new graphic font this way: “I am FS Albert. I am a modern and approachable font. My rounded corners make me more human and less technical.” The sphere symbol will be especially used on the Internet and will spin in other animated applications, says Maryanne Stump, Interbrand’s senior director of brand strategy. “The old Xerox logo and graphics just didn’t lend themselves to the new media landscape.”

During 18 months of research preceding this week’s launch, customers already made strong connections between the brand and attributes such as “dependable, traditional, and established.” The company’s challenge will be to reinforce those while improving impressions of the other characteristics, which currently separate Xerox from its rivals in a negative way.

Xerox, despite the ubiquity of its brand, operates at a brand-building disadvantage to rivals like Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba in that those brands have strong consumer franchises to buttress their business-to-business images. “The research shows that this gives our competitors an advantage in communicating innovation and modernity,” says Wergan.

The Business Week article goes on to talk about Xerox’s blunder in allowing Microsoft and Apple to swipe their forerunning ideas to our modern day personal computing. I found this somewhat ironic as the first thing I likened the new logo to, was the Xbox logo, a sub-brand waving under Microsoft’s banner.

Here’s a comparison:

My Thoughts:Anyway, I pretty much agree with what has been stated. The Xerox brand was overdue for an overhaul. The type was very old school/corporate, with less than ideal all cap readability. The switch takes the font from a thick and thin sans to a thicker sans with a darker toned red. I do like the type selection, FS Albert font, which has an organic playfulness to it that was desperately needed to liven up the corporate message.

Visually, the type maintains its consistency with each character equi-distant from baseline to cap line; but it’s certainly more readable now. The all lowercase definitely does bring about a more modern trend and the gradation on the ball definitely makes this web 2.0 or business 2.0, whatever you want to call it. I’m not a fan of gradation logo elements, but overall this logo is a notable improvement.

The design firm said, “The sphere symbol will be especially used on the Internet and will spin in other animated application.” Hmmm, spinning, gotta wonder about that…

Stuff like this is beyond critique…

Remember, logo design by David Paranteau

The interpretation:

• The black signifies the grief and loss of our nation (The Pentagon, the date, and the WTC towers in place of the number 11 in the date).
• The white background represents hope of freedom, peace, and healing.
• REMEMBER that freedom is worth preserving and also that it has never been won without loss. We remember our friends, our co-workers, spouses, rescuers, children, business partners, military and government officials, visitors to New York and our nation. We will never forget our fallen heroes.
• The flag is our national emblem and represents the highest ideals of individual liberty, justice and equal opportunity for all. These ideals will help our nation cope with this tragedy.

I just read an article on USA Today which says that the NFL will be releasing a new logo next year. The logo will replace a design which is nearly 40 years old.

The redesign will not deviate from the established shield shape, but will be switching some of the interior components. The amount of stars will be reduced from 25 to 8. The original number of 25 is said to be arbitrary, but the new figure of 8 is representative of the 8 divisions which compose the league. The stars will be larger scale and will certainly improve the scaling down and reproduction of the logo for merchandising purposes.

Next to the stars is the redesign of the football, which is said to more closely mimic that of the Vince Lombardi Trophy—which was my first impression as well. Although I do think the illustration is an improvement, it’s my opinion that the more vertical placement creates an awkward interaction with the shield spire above it.

Moving on to the type, the new face shifts from a stylized serif, noticeable on the L, versus a slab serif. The change simplifies the type and makes it crisp. The increased white space surrounding the type also helps make this version more readable than its predecessors.

Finally, color. The new blue is darker and bolder which coupled with the current red, makes the mark very bold. For football, a bold impression is the key.

Other sports articles:

• Washington Capitals Logo Design
• Capitals Logo Follow-Up

The post below is a great typography article, written by a former colleague of mine, Kendrick Hang. I would like to add that ClearviewHwy is a font software package indentical to the font Clearview, but includes kerning data in addition to approved letterspacing. ClearviewHwy and Clearview were both designed by Meeker & Associates.

Even prior to the invention of the printing press, page design and lettering were important in the production of books. When monks were producing books by hand, the quality of the lettering was a huge issue. Letters had to be consistent in form, spaced evenly, and each line on the page was fully justified, by hand! Soon after the Gutenberg brought us the the printing press in 1450, typeface design, page design, and typesetting (setting the wooden or metal blocks of type for each page) became an art and a very important skilled trade that lasted until around the 1970s when computer-based printing appeared on the scene. These days, we’ve forgotten a lot about typography and how quality books used to be, especially when we think that the horrendous output that our word processors produce looks just fine. Fonts (lots of horrible ones) are available a dime a dozen, but I feel that most people underestimate how important typography is—mainly because the human visual system is so sensitive to minor details. Just as an example, facial expressions are millimeter differences on a person’s face, but we can notice a change in facial expression just as fast as it changes.

In recent news, albeit news only I and a couple other geeks read about, the Federal Highway Administration approved of a new highway sign font, the first time this has happened in 30 years. No big deal to the general public, but it’s a huge deal for people who are interested in typography. So, without further delay, I’ll introduce this new typeface with a few samples and comparisons.

Introducing ClearviewHwy:

Clearview is intended to replace the in-house Federal Highway Adminstration (FHWA) letterforms. Here is FHWA standard first, then ClearviewHwy below it:

The difference is obvious with this example, again FHWA standard first, ClearviewHwy after:

If you’re approaching these signs from a distance, three design elements in the new sign will help, (1) the better shape of the letterforms, (2) the use of mixed-case letters, (3) providing a consistent background. With all capital lettering, each letter looks like a block from a distance. Mixed case lettering provides more shape cues (varying letter heights and widths) to our visual system. Also in the new sign, using one background relaxes our visual system from having to jump between nine background shapes (WEST, EAST, TO / US-23, US-23, US-40 / up arrow, right arrow, right arrow). If you don’t believe me about the letter forms, take a look at this example of less than ideal driving conditions where contrast is reduced:

Although the difference appears to be relatively minor,

the increased effectiveness is measurable. Based on studies conducted at the Pennsylvania Transportation Institute, they found that changing the font from FHWA to ClearviewHwy, nighttime sign reading distance improved by 16 percent, or 80 extra feet, or 1.2 extra seconds at 45mph. By changing signs that were in all-caps to mixed-case, they found a 29 percent increase in nighttime recognition, especially with older drivers.