On Wednesday 25th November, nine senior undergraduate students, from the American University in Dubai (AUD) Visual Communications programme, visited our head-office in Media City. The visit – a result of AUD’s continued effort to establish shared-partnerships with the city’s wider creative community – was aimed at providing students with a rare insight to our workings, processes and client work.

Greeting our guests on arrival, Dan Dimmock presented the students with a range of techniques and best-practice principles used to build effective, sustainable and powerful institutional brands. Of the work on show, Dan gave examples from our portfolio of completed projects, which included: Brand identity creation for Netjets Middle East and Dubai International Capital, brand communications for the Community Development Authority and Action for Children – the UK’s largest children’s charity – a recent award-winning rebranding project, he had worked on last year.

On Tuesday, 8th December, together with Sajag Patel, Dan followed up with a second presentation on the commercial reasons behind brand identity change.

More lectures will follow in the new year.

Dina Faour, Assistant Professor and AUD undergraduate course leader, said:

“It was an excellent opportunity for the students to actually visit an award-winning branding business. These young designers who have been learning all about developing corporate visual identities got to now see it all in action! This has been quite inspiring for them. We are looking forward to more collaboration with Breathe Branding as we believe in the complementary relationship between academia and the creative industries.”

Additional information:

Download Press Release

View Dan’s first presentation on Slideshare.net

Batelco, the leading telecommunications company in the Kingdom of Bahrain, has unveiled a brand new, ultra modern look and feel, at a major event held for its staff on December 10th, at the Company’s Hamala Headquarters.

Batelco Chairman Shaikh Hamad bin Abdulla Al Khalifa said that Batelco’s bold new look was ideal for Bahrain today as the Kingdom continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace.

“This is a very modern new look that encompasses all the integrity, spirit and heart that has evolved over our long history and which is today an integral part of Batelco,” he said.

Batelco Chief Executive Bahrain Gert Rieder

Batelco Chief Executive Bahrain Gert Rieder said he was delighted and proud to unveil the new Batelco brand [by Futurebrand].

“The new identity celebrates Batelco as a Bahraini icon, linking Batelco in colour and with the letter B, to the Kingdom of Bahrain. The powerful, bilingual B transcends all cultures and will stand as a symbol that everyone can identify with and recognise easily. The logo also resembles an infinity sign, further communicating Batelco’s omnipresence throughout Bahrain” stated Mr. Rieder.

Source: Batelco, Rebranded with a Modern Look for 2010 and Beyond

Additional resources: Tony Spaeth / Identityworks

“Turns out that counterfeit luxury goods don’t make the person but may well inspire them to purchase the genuine item in a couple of years, according to research by Renee Richardson Gosline, an assistant professor of marketing at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.” [Continue reading Patrick’s post…]

Source: The Good and Bad of Fake Luxury, by Patrick Collings

See: www.identityworks.com/forum

Dan’s comment:

This is great, Roger. Thank you. Nothing appears to disturb the balance between ‘conservative thinking’ and ‘creative genius’ more than a good (or bad) piece of dynamic branding. The static launch of the London 2012 Olympic identity immediately springs to mind. Talking of Conservative thinking: Former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher expressed her personal disapproval with BA’s tail-fin identity system, at the launch event, by covering a replica model aeroplane with her handkerchief. She was quoted as saying: “We fly the British flag, not these awful things.” Not a great start for any national carrier.

There is an interesting article by Alice Rawsthorn in today’s International Herald Tribune / NY Times. See: “Punctuating Corporate Identity“. The article, inspired by AOL’s (sorry, Aol.’s) dot, discusses how many brands have tried to achieve visual differentiation through the (effective, or not) use of punctuation marks — exploring a number of reasons as to why that is. Of those mentioned, Rawsthorn includes Generation Y’s influence and the mass-adoption of the new language of text message writing and Tweeting et cetera.

If this is true, I wonder whether newly-created dynamic on-screen identities, when combined with improper grammar (originating out of laziness and a short attention span) will prove to be just a trend. Resulting in the creation of a number of unsustainable and short-lived corporate brand identity systems.

DD

Earlier this week, the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games identity was revealed to the world… sporadically, if I’m not mistaken.

Anyway, picking up the story, post-UAE National Day, on LogoDesignLove (thanks David Airey), whilst I do find myself agreeing with many of the sentiments expressed by Fred Burt, MD of Siegel+Gale in London, reaffirmed by David - on Sochi 2014’s look-and-feel and its less-than comfortable symmetry - it is Fred’s summation that I agree with more:

“…it’s the experience not the logo that will make this brand.”

Until the success (or failure) of London 2012 can be measured, we’ll have to accept that continued and incredibly subjective comparisons between ‘all others’ and the London 2012 identity will be drawn — the result of a poorly executed launch campaign by London 2012, I may add. However, I do remain hopeful that the dynamic nature of the 2012 logo, will prove critics wrong, and the Games will be able to deliver.

Until then, back to Sochi 2014. Personally, I think this identity has little or no ambition — the palette is obvious and cold, visual references are weak and it is incredibly dated. Had he not been on the slopes of St. Moritz in 1981, the Sochi 2014 logo identity would be quite-at-home on the front of Roger Moore’s skiing jacket in For Your Eyes Only.

Where’s the forward-looking destination brand identity?

@DanDimmock